


who favor fire

by cathalin



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angry Sex, Friendship, From Sex to Love, Hate Sex, M/M, Older Characters, Veterans, Work In Progress, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:56:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathalin/pseuds/cathalin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Tony spend most of their time fighting. Eventually, when they are both at a low point, sparks of a different kind fly and they have sex, with serious impacts on the team, their working relationship and them as individuals.  They vow "never again," and have to piece back together a working relationship. In the process, they learn new things about each other, and themselves.</p><p>  <i>Tony’s hands tighten fractionally in Steve’s shirt. He can feel the adrenalin racing in his veins, the desire to wipe that judgmental frown off Steve’s face for once. It’s a danger signal, that feeling, and he knows it. He’s supposed to do some deep breathing or adjust his chakras or walk away or something. Be <i>mature</i>.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have a long explanatory note at the bottom of the fic, which you can read if you want to hear me babble on about writing frustration and sundry warnings to readers about this being a WIP. <3

It’s been three months since they sent Loki packing. Two since Pepper left. Not Stark Industries, not their friendship, but left... him.

Coincidentally -- or maybe not -- it was right about the same time the remodel on the Tower was done, or done enough to allow people to start moving in. He’s pretty sure Pepper twisted a few arms at the end there, the Avengers who’d be most wary of relying on Tony for a place to live. But they all did it in the end, some of them keeping their other apartments for backup, some of them moving everything they owned into their designated floor.

He and Pep had spent so much time designing the thing, it’s kind of hard to think about it, so Tony mainly doesn’t. Everything about it had been their baby, from the placement of people by floor (Tony on top, heh, then a fully equipped group floor, then Cap and then the rest of them, with a few vacant levels before the public floors for insulation and any future need).

It’s kind of sucky timing for Tony to have to deal with other people right now at all, let alone share parking and private elevators, though admittedly the team mainly left him alone at first. Things... got a little rough. Even Steve, who had been in his face a lot of the time about all kinds of bullshit, gave him some space for a while.

Everyone must have had a meeting or something eventually, though, because after a couple of weeks of Tony sitting in the dark drinking and watching Mythbusters re-runs, the team -- god, he can’t even believe he’s on a fucking _team_ \-- is up in his space getting him to do things, go out, get back to work.

Luckily, there hasn’t been much action on the Bad Guy front, though honestly Tony would rather deal with some new whack job than what he’s dealing with now. Cleanup. Yes, they’re still cleaning up. It’s seriously a bitch, and something he tries to avoid on general principle. There’s regular cleanup, which sucks badly enough as it is, and then there’s cleaning up after an invasion by creatures from another dimension. Messy. Endless. Boring. Something that apparently only superheroes and SHIELD employees are allowed to do, because of nasty alien chemicals or secrecy or a throwaway line in some over-lawyered liability clause somewhere.

Anyway, Tony’s been able to avoid some of it. Actually, most of it. There’s been... really important other stuff to do. Not to mention, drinking in the dark, alone.

~

Typically, Steve doesn’t share Tony’s view of what things should and should not be on Tony’s dance card, which is why he’s up in Tony’s face right now -- in the workshop for fuck’s sake-- nattering on about responsibility and fair share and a bunch of other crap. Tony’s working on plans for revamping his revamp of the new Avenger tower and listening to every fourth word or so. He finally looks up when Steve grabs his arm just hard enough it almost-hurts.

A few of Steve’s words filter in: “...already know what you think of me so what I say won’t matter, but you’d think you would at least care about your image. Though I suppose it’s one thing to be a _philanthropist_ , and another thing to actually help people. But it figures you--”

Tony tunes it out and shakes off Steve’s hand. Or tries to; Steve’s fingers tighten on his arm to the point it actually hurts. Not a lot, but Tony’s long past the point he’s going to let anyone -- _anyone_ \-- manhandle him. Unless it’s the fun kind.

The two of them had their conflicts from the first moment they met, but they’d been able to work together okay. Pretty well, actually. That had briefly slopped over into their non-work interactions and for a while they’d arrived at a sort of wary peace. No more; every day recently Steve’s been pushing Tony more and more, pressing him about bullshit this and bullshit that again. Getting in digs non-stop.

Most people think Steve’s just giving Tony grief like you would your buddy. Tony knows better. He can see the real animosity underlying Steve’s comments. The judgment. And in fairness, Steve’s not alone in that: Tony judges him right back. Sanctimonious, naive, arrogant; the list goes on.

“Screw you,” Tony says, low and cutting. “Let me go. Go bother someone who cares.”

Steve’s hand tightens even more on Tony’s bicep, and he steps in closer. His eyes narrow in the pissed-off, serious expression Tony has grown very familiar with. “Now listen. I get that you’ve got a huge problem with me, and that’s just fine. More than fine. But--”

“Yeah, well that’s where you’re breaking your Boy Scout vows, isn’t it, champ, because you are so _not_ fine with being treated like what you really are, instead of some souped-up patriotic icon. It makes you crazy that I don’t fall all over myself to worship at your altar.”

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, then lets go of Tony, starts to back away. “Forget it. We don’t need your help, anyway. You’d just turn it into the Tony Stark show.”

Tony doesn’t know how it happens, but next thing he knows he’s got a fistful of Steve’s shirt and is up partway on his toes in Steve’s face. “At least the Tony Stark show is something people would buy tickets for. As opposed to the Sanctimonious Stick-up-Your-Ass Show.”

Steve sucks in a harsh breath and grabs Tony, strong hands curling around his biceps. He’s practically vibrating, so, score. “Yeah, it makes you so big to call names, doesn’t it? Everything has to be a joke or an insult. It’s too _boring_ to think about values or respect.”

“You said it, not me, Captain Boring.” Tony’s hands tighten fractionally in Steve’s shirt. He can feel the adrenalin racing in his veins, the desire to wipe that judgmental frown off Steve’s face for once. It’s a danger signal, that feeling, and he knows it. He’s supposed to do some deep breathing or adjust his chakras or walk away or something. Be _mature_.

Steve says, low and hot: “At least I act my age.”

“Actually about seventy decades older than it.”

Steve breathes in hard. Yeah that was probably kind of a shitty thing to say, even for Tony.

“Better than seducing girls barely out of their teens,” Steve says. “Not to mention the boys.” It’s a low blow for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that mixed with the drinking, Tony’s fallen back on some of that stuff in the quest to obliterate anything he might be feeling, or maybe it’s more like, make himself feel anything at all. The judgment Tony knows must be there behind the “boys” doesn’t help either.

Tony’s fingers clutch harder at Steve’s shirt; his vision swims and he’s seeing everything literally tinged with red. “Yeah, well, maybe you should teach me that lesson now,” he says, right in Steve’s face. “The one you talked about the first time we fucking met. You’re full of talk. But I suppose the Boy Scout can’t sully his widdle fingers.”

Steve pushes out a lungful of air. Tony can almost feel the electricity rising off him in waves. His biceps are bulging, his eyes dark. It should be terrifying. It _is_ terrifying. And actually, also kind of--

Tony’s heart is beating double-time, his body surging with heat and energy. His hands curl into fists.

“Maybe you should suit up, and we’ll go. Have at it. Maybe it would help,” Steve says through a clenched jaw. “Help _this_.” He gestures between them with a jerky motion of his hand.

“Yeah, so everyone can see how a man in an iron suit beats up a poor, defenseless guy in a leotard? Don’t think so.” Tony shakes his head and figures he’ll back off, turn away from Steve.

Any second now.

Steve’s hands are clenched around Tony’s arms, and it seems like he’s moved even closer. Or maybe that’s Tony; they’re practically flush up against each other. Tony has to look up slightly to meet Steve’s eyes, which is annoying as fuck. Steve’s mouth is set in a line and there’s an indent in his smooth cheek from him clenching his jaw so hard. Good. He’s sweating some, maybe leftover from before, or from holding himself back from killing Tony. A bead of perspiration slides down his golden skin and hovers on his top lip. Any minute now, Steve will have to lick it off...

Steve makes a scoffing sound and Tony startles, looks up. Steve shakes Tony a little, effortlessly. “You are so frustrating,” he chokes out. “Just. Just stop. Just. I should make you stop.”

“Yeah, make me,” Tony says, hardly recognizing his voice, low and gravely. He clears his throat and this time when he speaks, he sounds a bit more normal again: “Like I said before, I’ve always been tempted to call you on it. But now I’m _definitely_ wanting to make you try. If you can, star-spangled man, and I do mean spangled; what do you do, paint that leotard on every morning?”

Steve makes an incoherent noise and grabs Tony tighter, yanks him in close and _shakes_ him gently a couple of times like he’s just trying the idea out. Oh _fuck_ he’s strong; Tony’s partway up on his toes. Steve takes a huge breath and bends his head down like he’s pulling himself together, and just _holds_ Tony there, foreheads almost touching and faces inches away from each other. Tony can feel Steve’s warm, sharp, exhales on his face. He wants to push Steve away, make a cutting insult and saunter out, but his body is frozen into place and his brain refuses to work. Words don’t come. His chest rises and falls, double-time.

Steve’s sweating more now; Tony can smell it, along with his stupid old-fashioned hair stuff. When Steve raises his head, his face is flushed and his lips are shiny, his lips are-- “You’re so, so,” Steve chokes out, hoarse and tight. He’s not letting go, long fingers wrapped around Tony’s elbows now, squeezing.

Everything’s hot and spinning a little and Tony’s so angry, heat under his skin, Steve right there, radiating heat and anger and--

“I should make you shut up for once, I want to--,” Steve says, voice gone all hoarse and quiet, cutting himself off abruptly.

Tony shivers -- some kind of weird visceral reaction to hearing Captain America’s voice so low and wrecked-sounding, he figures. There’s no time to really appreciate it, because Steve huffs out another breath, then yanks Tony in even closer so they’re pressed together chest to chest. It’s almost like they’re hugging, arms around each other now, but their bodies are tense, muscles taut, their breathing harsh. It feels like Steve is barely restraining himself from hauling off and punching Tony in the kidneys; his arms are like steel around Tony.

Steve breathes harshly in Tony’s ear and his hands tighten and loosen on Tony’s back, like Steve’s fighting the desire to just crush Tony bare-handed. Something he could definitely do, easy, in probably about three seconds.

Tony turns his head a tiny fraction and whoa; his mouth is really, really close to Steve’s, and how did he not realize that until this moment. Steve shivers, full-body; Tony’s lips almost-nuzzle the corner of Steve’s jaw.

It’s heady, like the feeling the second before Iron Man takes off, the sudden rush of the urge to move in just that fraction more, press his open mouth on that square of skin, see what happens. He has to suck in a lungful of air just thinking about it. Steve turns his head a fraction more and Tony can’t breathe, it’s like--

You know what, _screw it_ , it’s better than before takeoff, the rush is more like when the power cuts out when he’s high over Manhattan, sick swoop of his stomach, but the adrenalin...

Tony’s pretty sure Steve moves his mouth a tiny bit more towards Tony’s before Tony can move. Tony’s lips tingle, fuck, his fingers tingle. He can’t think; he probably turns his face a little more. Steve makes some kind of noise, a low, guttural sound that makes Tony shudder, and he feels it reverberate through Steve, like a feedback loop. _Fuck it_ , he decides again, and instead of pulling back, lets his lips press to Steve’s. Just for the rush, or so he can say he did. To himself at least.

Steve doesn’t immediately crush him with his pinkie or shove him away, and it’s impossible not to press up again, press hard to see what will happen and to feel those lips, full under his. He’s not thinking about stuff like what’s possible right now anyway, consumed in the feel of Steve’s full lips against his, the aching need that he suddenly has to shove his tongue in that infuriating mouth and show Steve what you get if you take on Tony fucking Stark.

Steve’s absolutely still for a moment, except for the rapid-fire beating of his heart, which Tony can feel through multiple layers of clothing. Tony has time to think, _oh shit_ , and then Steve’s kissing back, if you can call it that: it’s like all the anger he carries around all the time -- oh, hey, mental note for later to think about that revelation, that Bruce isn’t the only guy around here who’s angry all the time -- is in his lips, and then his tongue.

 _Holy fuck,_ Tony has time to think, _Captain America is tongue-fucking me_ , and then it’s all he can do to keep a supply of oxygen flowing, because Steve is gasping in his mouth, big hands fumbling on Tony, sliding down his back to his ass -- whoa, Tony’s knees actually go weak at that, because _fuck_ \-- then pulling them together. It’s incredible; they’re both hard through their clothes. Steve grinds them together, manhandling Tony’s ass, mmm holy _shit_.

Tony’s got sparks behind his eyes and a burning ache in his cock. All he wants is to get closer, get naked skin under his shaking fingers. Steve’s rutting against him and panting into his mouth, fingers groping for the top of Tony’s pants, his zipper, fumbling. Tony grabs for Steve’s belt buckle, groaning when it won’t come undone.

Steve makes a frustrated, angry sound and shoves Tony’s hands away, places them on Tony’s belt, then reaches for his own. Oh. Faster that way, right. In the time it takes Tony to get it, Steve’s undone his buckle and is shoving his pants and underwear down and out of the way, oh _god_. Tony gets with the program and sets a land-speed record for undoing his own pants, shoving them and his boxers down as far down his thighs as he can.

Steve grabs him again, huge hands on his hips, panting breaths in his ear. Tony slides his hands up under Steve's shirt, traces the planes of his stomach, rock hard, the expanse of that killer back. Steve groans and thrusts against Tony, hands sliding down from Tony’s hips to -- _ohhh_ his ass again.

Their cocks bump against each other tantalizingly. Steve makes a bitten-off sound that might be a moan: his hands turn hot and demanding on Tony, using the leverage on his ass to try to shove their pelvises together harder. 

It’s incredible, all that power and strength partly unleashed. Tony grinds himself into Steve, sucking on his shoulder through the cloth of his shirt. It’s frustrating; their dicks keep slipping, the angle’s wrong and there’s not enough friction. Tony works a hand up to Steve’s mouth -- his own is too dry -- and presses against those lush lips. Steve’s a quick learner, gotta admit that, because he opens his mouth and sucks in Tony’s fingers.

Tony groans and Steve opens his eyes; they’re hot on Tony, dark. Tony gasps for air, then presses in more with his fingers. Steve -- oh shit -- licks them, eyes still locked with Tony’s. Tony reaches to get a better hold on Steve’s ass so he can grind them together harder, but it’s frustrating, not quite getting him what he needs.

That’s okay though because a second later Tony’s being lifted -- holy shit, literally lifted -- into the air and pulled in tight against Steve so their cocks are butting up against each other from a better angle, Steve using his strength to hold Tony in place effortlessly, and if that isn’t a fucking turn on then nothing is.

Tony moans -- hey, he’s only human -- and Steve makes a desperate sound around his fingers. Tony slides them out of Steve’s mouth and jams then down between their bodies, desperate now himself, wanting to touch Steve’s cock. It’s going to be amazing, he knows it, can feel it against his belly right now. His fingers search and -- oh yeah, thick and long and rock hard baby.

Steve groans in Tony’s ear and Tony can’t stand it, has to spread his fingers out, grab his own cock too, curving his belly in to make room for his hand and fisting both their cocks together, oh _god_.

Steve fucking _growls_ , hands tightening on Tony’s ass, lips seeking out the gap in Tony’s shirt at his collar. Steve’s mouth works the sensitive skin of his neck and Tony shudders. He flicks his thumb over the head of Steve’s cock and Steve bites down. Tony groans, arching his neck, but manages to keep jacking them; everything’s slicker by the second. 

The fingers of one of Steve’s hands brush near Tony’s crack, whether by accident or not Tony can’t tell. He is so very fucking on board with what that might mean. He shivers... the very idea... Steve makes a sound and hoists Tony up even higher, then slides one of those huge hands, hot and purposeful up Tony’s spine, until its at Tony’s neck, fingers carding in the hair at the back of Tony’s head. He’s -- oh fuck -- he’s holding Tony up effortlessly with _one hand_ , his other pressing Tony’s face in close so he can kiss the shit out of him.

Tony’s pinned between Steve’s hands, Steve’s strength holding him up off the ground, anger still flaring red-hot between them, and it’s -- it’s beyond anything, it’s hot and wet and Tony’s shuddering, barely hanging onto enough muscle control to keep jacking their dicks, now slick with Steve’s spit and their precome. Steve’s cock is throbbing against Tony’s and Steve is gasping in Tony’s ear and then he’s kissing him again, tongue fucking into Tony’s mouth now, filthy like Tony likes it. Tony wraps his legs around Steve’s hips and Steve moans, turning them so Tony’s back is up against the wall, oh _fuck_ it’s amazing, held like this where they can get leverage and Tony can’t move, can only--He winds his legs further around Steve and just lets himself go, thrusting up into Steve’s cock and his own hand, fucking his tongue into Steve’s mouth when Steve gives up control for a second.

Someone groans, guttural and harsh, maybe both of them. Everything goes dark around the edges as pleasure builds in Tony’s cock, his balls, the soles of his fucking feet for god’s sake. Tony can’t move, pressed between Steve’s hands and body. Steve’s still shaking, probably with anger. It’s the fucking hottest thing that’s ever happened to Tony -- and a lot has happened to him. Steve rips his mouth off Tony’s and gasps in air, then shudders hard, rocking Tony, hand on his ass brushing just once where it counts and Tony’s head explodes. Everything is spangly white, pleasure rocketing like a bullet up Tony’s spine. There’s a roaring, maybe air or maybe Steve shouting, or maybe it’s him, and everything focuses down to pleasure, rocking him, shaking him, white-hot.

~

Tony comes back to himself slowly. First it’s vague sensations of heat where he’s pressed up against someone, cold where air’s hitting something wet. So yeah, wet, then a blossom of faint pain where fingers are pulling away from his hips. Hard wall behind him. Muscles, lax and happy, Cock, covered in spunk and sweat from another body. Scent of male sweat, vague shaving cologne--

Oh, shit.

 _Shit._

The warm body plastered up against him starts moving away. Tony’s brain stutters, tries to come online. Words want to tumble out of his mouth, but for once, he stops them. Anything that’s in his brain right now would come out weird or pathetic or just... Wow, he needs to get his brain back. Strong hands lower him gently down, linger for a moment while Tony finds his footing; whoa, shaky knees.

It’s shocking when Steve speaks, low and wrecked and breathless, with a tone Tony’s never heard from him. “Are you. Did I hurt you?”

Tony bristles instinctively. “As if.” He pulls away from Steve’ hands completely.

“But I--”

I’m fine,” Tony snaps, disoriented. He can’t believe he... and Steve, what the-- “Save your solicitousness for the dewy groupies you pretend you don’t flirt with.”

Steve stiffens, straightening. “Fine.”

Tony can’t help but look at him, sheen of sweat and pants shoved down and hair disheveled... Just, just fucking _whoa,_ because what the actual _fuck_ , this is actual Captain fucking America, what the actual fuck just happened?

Steve opens his mouth, forehead creased and eyes serious on Tony, but Tony’s mouth opens and words spill out to talk over anything he was going to say, since Steve has that serious look that Tony just is not going to deal with right now. “So, are you gonna freak out over the cock involved here? Because that was definitely cock. Did you get dosed with some alien serum or something, Rogers, because this all doesn’t feel very... Captain America-ish.”

Steve’s expression changes, face going blank and distant. “Little late to ask, don’t you think?.” He shakes his head, and Tony focuses for a moment on his lips, still red and swollen and full. “Just tick me off on your list and don’t worry about it.”

Tony narrows his eyes. List? “Well, speaking of lists, when the fuck did I get on yours, seeing as how I’m -- what were the words, oh right -- ‘selfish, wouldn’t lie myself on the line for anyone else, immature--”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” Steve says. “In fact, forget it. Just forget the whole thing.” He gathers himself to go.

“No problemo,” Tony says after him. “Already have.”

Steve almost-slams the door on his way out, but of course is too much the superhero to actually slam it. Fine. It’s... It’s better that way. Keeps things clear.

 

~end Chapter 1  
~ ~ ~ ~


	2. Chapter Two

Tony feels like it’s branded on his forehead: _despoiler of American icon_ or possibly worse, _asshole, no really_. So it’s weird when no one seems to pick up on anything different. Maybe it’s normal for him and Steve to ignore each other completely except when they’re throwing nasty looks the other’s way.

Even Steve doesn’t seem that different at first glance. His mouth is still drawn in that thin, angry line and his eyes are still judgmental.

He _is_ different, though, Tony figures out. He’s scrupulously polite and completely emotionless when he has to deal with Tony, and he has to deal with Tony... basically never, it turns out, except in the field. It makes Tony realize how much they interacted before, even though a lot of that interaction was verbal sparring and downright nasty comments. In fact, now that he thinks about it, Tony’s probably the only person Steve was noticeably _impolite_ with. Up until now. Now, it’s like Miss Manners is there interacting with him. A 1940s version of Miss Manners.

Granted, some of their earliest (negative) interaction was influenced by Loki’s sceptre mind-control bullshit, but there was real anger specific to Tony behind Steve’s words then, and certainly after. And that’s gone, or more accurately, hidden behind a mask of polite blandness.

Though it takes a while, the team eventually does feel the difference between them. Tony knows they do; he sees the veiled looks and hears the tail end of a whispered comment or two. There’s nothing much to be done, though, or at least, anything he can think of would just make things worse or be something he’s not willing to do. Besides, in the field they’re functioning just fine, and that’s what matters.

That’s how Tony matters.

~

Tony’s kind of in a weird space these days. He’s in the lab virtually non-stop when there’s not an Avengers job to be done, losing himself for days at a time in creating better polymers for shielding and armour (not everyone has a metal suit). On the side, he’s working on propulsion, communication and intelligence-gathering. No way he’s leaving all of that to SHIELD and its military-industrial complex default-setting mentality.

It’s really quiet. Bruce comes and hangs out, tinkering with his own projects beside him, and they talk some. It’s -- wow, this is a weird thing to say about a guy who turns into a giant rage monster but there you have it -- it’s very peaceful and even-keeled and mature. It calms Tony down, but in a way that leaves some part of him on edge. And okay, yeah, he gets that’s contradictory, but he’s always reserved the right to be that way in his own head.

Steve used to find Tony sometimes and, well, be a jerk? Argue with him, make fun of him, insult his project choices...

Wow. If he hadn’t already gone a few round with various types of therapy, he’d probably sign himself up.

Yeah, no, not his style. Plan B, then. Copious amounts of alcohol, drugs when possible, and no-strings sex.

~

For a while, Tony manages everything just fine. He plays hard and works hard and neither interferes with the other. Oh sure, various team members try to talk to him. In that way where “talk” means ‘say words while Tony solves high level physics problems in his head.’

After a while, though, he notices that he’s screwing up a little, missing things in the lab. His after-hours’ activities aren’t revving his engine like they usually do, either. Only one remedy for that, so he doubles down on the partying.

It’s nothing anyone else would notice. Strike that; Pepper would have noticed, but she’s still keeping her distance -- by mutual agreement, to let them both get their footing in the new way they’re relating.

Steve himself approaches Tony once, a couple of weeks into this weird phase, projecting an aura of Captain America, Brave Leader. “Look,” he says, not meeting Tony’s eyes. “You need to--”

“Yeah, no, don’t even start,” Tony says. “Unless you want to tell me my performance as Iron Man is being compromised in any way. Oh right, I just saved you and everyone else single-handedly this morning.” He had, too, when one of their routine cleanup missions turned out to be not so routine after all. “Speaking of, wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to, I don’t know, find out who fucked up the description of that trash heap? ‘Cause that wasn’t pieces of New York City skyscraper that we fished out of that place, I’m thinking.”

Steve frowns. “Are you okay? Any residual damage?”

“Nice of you to ask, but nah, fine and dandy, mon Capitan. Nothing that a little decontamination chamber couldn’t scrub off the suit. But it’s just, you know, embarrassing. Standards these days... where does SHIELD hire its help, anyway?”

Steve’s frown, if anything, grows, but now it’s more the usual ‘pissed at Tony’ expression. “They’re trying to run down why they thought it was a piece of building when instead it was...”

“Massively nuclear waste? It makes perfect sense to confuse those two things, after all.” Tony shakes his head. “Show yourself out; you’ve done your duty,” he says airily. “Besides, I have a night of debauchery to get ready for.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Steve swallows, hands curling into fists. “It could compromise the team, this, this...” He waves his hand in the air, outlining Tony’s body.

Tony raises his eyebrow. “Yeah? It compromises the team when I fuck around?” He leers at Steve. “You would know, I guess...”

Steve makes a frustrated sound and advances a step toward Tony, pushing into his space.

Tony raises his eyebrows. “Still? I guess we didn’t dispel all our tension then? Tsk, tsk, and here you’ve used up your quota of experimenting with the Gay for the century.”

“I didn’t--” Steve shakes his head. “Never mind. Just _stop it_ when we’re working. It could infect the team and hurt our mission.”

Tony laughs. “Our mission. Which, most of the time involves some guy dressed in a wig and spandex with some brilliant plan.” He shakes his head. “That a two year old armed with a NERF gun could stop.”

“Now listen,” Steve says, punctuating his words with an actual pointing finger.“I don’t care that your whole life is one big attempt to relieve your boredom or that mere mortals aren’t good enough for you. But I do care that your immaturity not endanger people, innocent people. Or the team.”

Tony can’t help it; he has a visceral reaction to people lecturing him. “Well, speaking only for myself, your Stick up your Ass-ness is more likely to hurt innocent people, not to mention the Holy Team, than anything I could dream up. ”

“God, you’re such an--” Steve bites off his words mid-sentence.

“Oh, say it’s not so!” Tony gloats, twirling the wrench that he’d been working with jauntily. “Did our Captain, representer of all things Good and Holy and American, take a deity’s name in vain and almost use another nasty word?”

Steve presses his lips together and takes another step towards Tony. “You’re, you--” His eyes are hot and there are spots of color in his cheeks.

Tony smirks. “Seems to me, you’re the one who’s letting emotion interfere with your actions.”

“You’ve been a jerk to me from Day One and you know it. I know I said some things to you that--”

“I don’t think anything we _said_ is the biggest issue here, Cap.”

Steve breathes out a huff of air and narrows his eyes. After a moment, he shakes his head. “You know what, forget it.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Tony says.

It doesn’t feel as satisfying as he thought it would when Steve leaves, though, this time closing the door gently behind him, like he doesn’t even care enough to want to slam it.

~ 

The whole thing is many weeks behind them and things are back, well, not to normal, because there never has been any normal, but they’re able to exist in the same space without everyone in the room starting to exchange meaningful looks. Tony’s still frustratingly aware of Steve’s presence and location in a room, but it’s nothing that won’t fade.

He scrupulously avoids being alone with Steve for anything but Avengers business, and Steve does the same. It’s not like Tony’s afraid to deal with him, he’d just rather not have to do it right now. He sometimes catches Steve glowering at him during a briefing, or starting to make a comment when Tony shows up having obviously spent a wild night out, but he always stops himself. Steve doesn’t say a word about any of it, in fact, and he leaves Tony alone and doesn’t barge into the workshop demanding he explain why he did something or didn’t do something. Good.

~ ~ ~

As it turns out, it’s a good thing everything’s pretty much back to normal and they’re all centrally located, because the endless, boring cleanup missions -- which they ought to be finished with by now for fuck’s sake -- turn messier. Heh.

It starts small, with a couple more cleanup missions involving potentially lethal doses of radiation even though “SHIELD swore it was just building debris, really!” SHIELD’s working overtime trying to figure out if someone’s hacked its computers or damaged its equipment or -- no one says this part -- compromised its people. In the meantime, the Avengers manage to dispose of the radioactive stuff before any civilians get hurt. So far, all the dangerous stuff is from sections of the region that are still quarantined, so no one’s been exposed. 

Unfortunately these occasional blips don’t do much for the boredom factor. Retrieval settles back down to routine -- now they know about the danger -- it’s easy peasey with the Iron Man suit warning them if something that’s supposed to be just regular rubble... isn’t. Tony’s hacked into the government analysis of the readings, of course, just in case there’s something SHIELD is missing, or not telling them. But so far it looks like a simple case of classifying the debris wrong or not doing enough testing before calling in the removal teams.

He and Steve... well. For a while Steve was back to icy, and Tony stayed quiet, mainly, and things were okay. They worked together and had no other interaction outside of jobs and that was fine. 

After all, each of them has their own floor of the Tower, and there’s a buffer communal floor in between them, one Tony doesn’t go down to these days. 

Recently, though, things have been devolving to old patterns again. Steve’s mouth automatically thins into a hard line when Tony shows up to assignments, and he’s started making nasty comments again. Oh, they’re always couched in terms of being concerned about Tony, but it’s disapproval, pure and simple. Granted, Tony doesn’t do anything to hide the shadows under his eyes, or the fact he’s in the same clothes he went out in the night before. But fuck Steve, seriously, and everyone who tries to tell Tony how to live his life. Just, fuck that. 

~

Tony presses his fingers on his temples to try to ease the headache as he walks into SHIELD Headquarters at the crack of fucking dawn. It’s just as well he hasn’t even been to sleep yet, but even so, he feels frayed, on edge. If his lifestyle weren’t enough, the past week or two it’s felt like there’s something in the back of his brain trying to work a solution, but he can’t figure out what it’s for. It’s a nagging, crawly feeling that doesn’t mean anything good.

Something triggered a “Loki alarm” in upstate New York, hence the assembling. Turns out it’s a false alarm -- Loki’s safe in his bizarro spacetime-warping prison or whatever -- but they stay on Fury’s order to discuss strategy, just in case Loki ever does reappear. It’s been a while since they reviewed contingency plans. Oh joy.

Steve lays out a sensible defensive strategy. Something about his calm voice and perfect grooming at the asscrack of a.m. grates on Tony’s nerves. He finds himself rolling his eyes and mumbling about someone’s spandex being too tight.

Steve’s pencil breaks in his fingers. “Maybe some people would rather have spandex that’s too tight than too loose,” he says pointedly.

Tony’s eyebrows go up. Whoa, that was pretty nasty for Rogers. It’s almost wounding, especially since despite appearances, Tony hasn’t actually ended up in bed with anyone for a couple of weeks, obviously not for lack of offers. Not that Steve would know that. “Careful, you know what might happen if you cut off the blood flow for too long...” Tony arches an eyebrow in the direction of Steve’s crotch. “Though actually, maybe that wouldn’t be a concern, considering.”

“We are here,” Steve says after a pointed pause, enunciating each word carefully, “to discuss our strategy in case Loki escapes. Do you have a comment?”

“Yeah, I do. We can implement your strategy all you want, but when nothing works, then I’ll end up flying any threat away on a one way trip out of this galaxy. Threat over. Next?”

The room is silent. “What?!” he asks, looking around at everyone’s faces. “Oh, I forgot... I’m, what were the words again Cap? Egotistical, selfish, incapable of sacrifice...”

“Tony,” Bruce says, mildly.

Tony’s sick of it, though, how everything’s his fault. Sick of the way everyone looks at him like he’s disappointed them. They should know better than to expect anything of him.

“Whatever. Are we done? Yeah, we’re done.” He walks out quickly. He thinks he sees Steve push to his feet, like he’s going to follow Tony, but he puts on speed and is fucking out. of. there.

~ 

Steve barges into Tony’s living area later that night, hands balled into fists. “Look,” he says, enunciating his words carefully. “Whatever the problem is, we have to--”

Tony slams his drink down and advances on him. “There’s only one fucking reason someone comes to my quarters late at night, and it’s not to talk.”

Steve flushes. “You are so full of yourself.” Steve moves toward the door like he’s going to back off, then stops himself, folding his arms across his chest.

“Am I?” Tony slinks closer. “The Little Captain -- though, not so little actually if I recall -- begs to differ.” Tony leers in the direction of Steve’s atrocious pleated khakis.

“I’m not here for that.” Steve’s eyes dart to Tony’s mouth.

Tony smirks. “Something different, then?” He gives Steve a once-over, top to bottom and back.

Steve narrows his eyes and comes even closer. “Obviously you’ve put some thought into it...”

“Ha, I like it, Baby has bite,” Tony says.

Steve balls his hands into fists and advances into Tony’s personal space. “Screw you.”

It’s jarring to hear something like that out of Steve’s mouth. This is where Tony should back off, stop this insanity. Show maturity, focus on the team, blah blah blah. Help Steve deal with -- whatever, the tragedy of his life. It’s been bleeding out more the past week or two, the anger that simmers there; Steve’s not that good at icy politeness, as it turns out. A good person would back off, let things get back to normal -- whatever that is.

Right.

Tony closes the distance between them. “That can be arranged.”

Steve’s nostrils flare. “Seriously, is everything a joke to you?” He’s almost vibrating with anger -- maybe mixed with something else -- hands clenching and unclenching, eyes catching on Tony’s lips, then darting away.

“If you’re not too scared, that is. I’d understand if you were--”

Steve grabs him and hauls him close.“Just shut up,” he murmurs. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

“Like I said, can be arrange--”

But the mocking words get swallowed by Steve’s mouth descending on Tony’s, and his hands, almost-rough on his body. It’s... it’s mind-numbingly hot, actually, all that banked power and heat. Not so banked; Tony’s going to have a new set of faint bruises where Steve grabbed him, and his lips already feel slightly swollen from Steve’s mouth on him, hard. Niiice.

The drinks Tony had combine with the dizzy heat of Steve’s body to make Tony’s head swim. In the good way; he’s already hard and has to gasp for air whenever Steve lets up for a second.

Steve’s hands are huge, and everywhere; not shy or hesitant at all. Tony reciprocates, rucking up Steve’s shirt and getting one hand sliding under it in back, one in front. Hey, if he has the chance, he’s going to be feeling up those muscles, because seriously.

The world spins some more and he’s flat on his back on the sofa, Steve’s weight bearing him down. Lust surges through Tony, hot and electric. Steve’s alternately attacking his mouth and his neck -- there’s that spot again that -- ahhhh -- how the fuck did he already figure that out. Tony squirms, but works his hands down to grab and hold onto that magnificent ass, occasionally letting them roam down just to feel the corded muscle in Steve’s thighs, then back up. Steve shudders and licks Tony’s neck; teeth just... there, but not biting. Yet.

Steve’s still poised up above Tony, weight not fully on top of him, those ridiculous arms holding him up while he leans down, but Tony uses the part of his brain that isn’t drowning in heat to get a leg wrapped around Steve and pull down insistently. Steve makes an inarticulate noise, then closes those last few inches, relaxing his weight down so he’s fully on top of Tony.

“Fuck,” Tony gasps, tangling their legs together.  
.  
Steve groans and his hips grind down onto Tony while he gasps into his shoulder.

There’s some kind of nagging voice in Tony’s head that sounds disturbingly like JARVIS nattering on about this being really fucked up, which -- yeah, that’s probably true. Definitely true. Probably. But fuck it, it’s not like either of their lives are exactly so together or anything; it’s all so fucked up anyway, who is he to stop Captain America from... whatever the hell he’s doing, which at the moment seems to be trying to drill Tony through the sofa. Whatever the guy’s been doing, he really doesn’t seem like the innocent he’s made out to be; he’s rutting down on Tony now in a way that’s almost, almost ‘-- ahhh oh _fuck_ , it’s unbearably hot, all barely-repressed super strength and barely-repressed soldiery homoerotic -- Yeah, you know what? Tony’s fucking going for this, screw it. It’s not like he really can think, anyway: everything’s jumbled hands and bodies and mouths and building heat.

Tony reaches down and fumbles with the zipper of those horrific Dockers or whatever they are; he needs that gorgeous cock naked and in his hand right the fuck now. Steve mirrors him and -- oh thank god -- starts working on Tony’s zipper. It’s taking too long, though, both of them fumbling around, and it’s going to give Tony time to actually think in a second, so he shoves Steve’s hands away, moves them over to Steve’s zipper, then reaches for his own fly, gets his pants and boxers shoved partway down his legs.

Tony takes a moment to thank himself for the luxuriously large sofa they’re on; it’s plush leather, wide and accommodating, which is a good thing because Steve’s got his own pants shoved down around his knees and holy Jesus. “Yess,” Tony hisses when Steve finally moves so he’s rutting down onto him.

It’s almost enough, Steve’s grunts and Tony’s moans, the slap of their skin together, the white-hot slide of Steve’s cock against his belly and his cock, but Tony wants more, he wants everything, with a powerful ache that surprises him.

“Jeez, Jeez,” Steve gasps, which brings Tony back to the present a little because, really, “Jeez”? He realizes he’s trying to get his legs up around Steve’s hips, but the stupid pants are stopping him, not to mention Steve’s, which are--

“Pants,” he says, then reaches out blindly, fumbles for the special drawer in the coffee table. Steve reaches down and shoves at his clothes while Tony kicks off his own, and then they’re back where they were, only this time -- oh god -- they’re both naked from the waist down. There are acres of hard muscle and taut skin under Tony’s hands and pressing down onto him, and he loses some time just shoving up into that, panting into Steve’s collarbone.

Steve’s hips go kind of stuttery, and Tony remembers what he grabbed from the drawer. He shoves a condom into Steve’s hand. Steve freezes for a second, then he gasps in a lungful of air and rips it open with his teeth, so, score. Tony’s heart races and his hand might even be shaking, but he slops out some lube and reaches down to open himself up while Steve rolls to the side slightly and gets the condom on.

Tony’s the opposite of shy, but knowing Steve is watching him out of the corner of his eyes makes his breath catch in his throat, makes him arch just a little higher. Makes him hurry.

There’s a moment of quiet when Steve’s body tenses up again, but Tony grabs his hip and makes a noise and then it’s all starting to blur because, is this really--oh _god_ it really is: Steve’s lining up and pushing in, arm muscles straining in effort, probably trying not to push in all at once, which, given the size involved is probably good--though it’d be amazing--and Tony can’t even breathe. Steve’s pushing Tony’s knee up, panting on top of him now, biting his lip in concentration, looking -- oh god -- looking at where their bodies are joined together. Tony arches and brings up his other leg and -- ohhh that’s deep, that’s good, so good. “Yess,” he says, and Steve gasps and pushes in a little harder and Tony moans despite himself and it’s hot and frantic and it’s a fucking tsunami hitting his prostate.

Steve’s amazing shoulder muscles are like rocks under Tony’s grasping hands and there’s sweat dripping down on Tony’s chest from where Steve is curled above him and it’s glorious, fucking glorious, just sensation and heat. Steve bends down more like he’s going to kiss Tony, using his incredible strength to hold himself in position, lips on Tony’s cheek, chin. Tony turns his face away and Steve just hangs there for a while. Tony doesn’t know why he did that; he’s not one of those guys who takes it up the ass but won’t kiss -- obviously; he’s had his tongue down Steve’s tonsils already tonight -- but there’s something, he doesn’t know what, just something about it. He doesn’t--

He arches up higher and squeezes down. Steve groans. Tony gets his hand on his cock, though it's almost unnecessary. He feels himself tighten inside and Steve actually moans, control slipping, thrusting hard now, so good, and it’s all too much, so intense, heat and friction and sweat and grunting and hands everywhere, and then Tony’s coming, shocked by it; he sees Steve’s face contorted by his own orgasm above him. Everything’s silence and heat and whiteout and clenched muscles and fucking amazing.

It feels a bit like deja vu when he comes back to himself a little, like the world is filtering in piece by piece. There are a few blissed-out moments of just lying there, somebody’s warm weight half on top of him, the feel of sweat and semen cooling on his body, heart rate slowing. Sure, in the back of his head he knows it’s Steve, but it’s so nice to just lie there, not thinking.

Maybe Steve feels the same way, because he’s still for a long time, not saying anything but not making any attempt to get up, either. At some point he pulls out, and Tony half-notices with the corner of his brain that isn’t focused on the short, slight flare of almost-pain that Steve knows to keep his fingers on the top of the condom so it doesn’t slip. Or hell, maybe he just does it because he’s super all around.

Tony starts feeling weird, an itch under his skin like this is going to mean something or he’s going to have to talk about feelings or deal with Steve’s gay freakout or, worse, that he’s fucked up again in a way that will affect the team. Affect the team even more than their adversarial relationship already does, that is. He’d like to just teleport himself to the workshop and build something awesome for about three weeks and come out on the other end with this whole... _thing_ having never happened.

Steve rolls all the way off and sits up. He leans his head into his hands.

Shit. Tony stays really, really quiet. Again, not like him. What the actual fuck.

Steve takes a breath and turns and looks at Tony. Whatever he sees, it makes him shake his head. He’s silent, though. He just turns and stands up, bending to grab his clothes, then pulls on his pants and throws on his shirt.

This is where a better guy would say something. The right something. Tony’s silent.

Steve walks out and shuts the door quietly.

It’s not until a while later that Tony realizes they hadn’t exchanged a single word for that entire -- encounter, other than some swearing and something about pants. He’s honestly not sure if that’s an improvement or not over their usual arguing. It’s certainly a first for him; usually people complain about him not shutting up.

~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is an asshole, he and Steve finally talk if by talk you mean they fail to understand each other by a mile, battle debris spikes hotter, and Pepper is awesome.

The silence continues.

It continues the next day during a briefing by Fury on the status of the cleanup. A pointless briefing, because, hello: the status is, there’s still debris to clean up and things to fix. Tony’s got a headache, not to mention some other aches and pains which--yeah, not going there.

“Someone let me know when there’s a point to this,” Tony says.. “I’ll just be over here trying to figure out why we’re just now discovering that months-old battle remnants previously categorized as regular garbage are hot. And I don’t mean in the ‘want to fuck your brains out’ way.” There’s a murmur around the table, and probably a cold stare from Cap’s direction, but they can all just deal with it. It’s a fucking waste for Avengers to be acting as garbage men and everyone knows it, or should. Also, that nagging feeling in the back of Tony’s head is scratching harder. 

“Well, was there a magic spell that made all your analysts more stupid than usual? A hack that made everyone’s tech say “no” when it really meant “yes”?” Tony leans his head back and closes his eyes. Normally that would draw a comment from Cap. Not today. SHIELD doesn’t have any answers, just a lot of minions running around behind the scenes trying to appease Fury and figure out what the hell is going on.

~

The silence between him and Steve continues later at their Avengers team meeting -- a weekly event now, how did that even happen? The team and assorted hangers-on gather at the Tower, with people reporting in long-distance if they can’t attend in person. 

It’s the first time Tony’s been down to the team floor for a while. He skipped their meeting last week, and Cap was absent the week before. It’s the last thing Tony feels like doing. He feels like a truck hit him, honestly. A really hot, really infuriating truck. He could just attend via tech again -- he’s a busy, busy guy after all -- but he’s too stubborn, or maybe just too stupid, not to show up. Looks like Steve feels the same way: he’s in a corner looking sulky when Tony walks in. He darts a quick glance up at Tony, then looks away, keeps his eyes off him the rest of the evening, mostly. Occasionally Tony feels his gaze on him, though, too-focused.

In for a penny, in for a pound, so of course Tony insists on bringing in dinner after the business part of their meeting, because damn it he’s not going to be the first to blink and it’s a tradition by this point for everyone who’s there, albeit not mandatory: takeout, Mexican this time, from the guy on the corner with the authentic stuff. 

Nobody says anything about it, but Tony knows he and Steve are being weird -- weirder -- with each other than normal: he sees Natasha and Clint dart significant glances at each other over their heads. Bruce for his part is more talkative than normal, asking questions about the movies he missed while he was in India that he hasn’t yet caught up on, filling the silences when neither he nor Steve talk much. 

Tony does his best to avoid Steve completely, but Steve corners him in the kitchen when he goes in for a coffee refill. Tony’s having serious trouble concentrating on the poker game and his headache is impossible to ignore. Steve’s got his Cap face on, all manly bravery and courage in the face of trouble, but he doesn’t meet Tony’s eyes. “Are you... Are you okay?” he asks, staring hard at the coffee filter in his hands.

“Okay? Of course I’m okay.” 

“We need to talk,” Steve says, fast like he’s trying to get it out quickly. “It was a mistake, what happened, and you--We need to talk.”

Tony rolls his eyes and reaches into the refrigerator for milk. “Yeah, well, there are a lot of things we need. Clean air, no more bad guys gunning at us, endless takeout. But guess what? We don’t always get what we want. Should I sing a few bars for you? No? Oh wait, another reference you don’t get.”

“Look,” Steve says, voice low and serious. “I get that... I get that this whole thing is nothing to you, but I. I’m really strong and I could have hurt--”

Tony turns his back on him and rummages in the cupboard for a coffee mug. “Sorry about your virgin sensibilities. Some of aren’t stuck in another century for our-”

There’s a low hiss behind him and Steve’s suddenly right there in Tony’s space, fingers barely brushing on the skin exposed at Tony’s lower back where his t-shirt rides up. Steve’s fingers are warm and noticeably gentle, outlining an area on Tony’s skin. 

Tony freezes. 

“Bruises. I left bruises,” Steve whispers.

“Stop it.” Tony turns around, then shoves Steve’s hand away from where it’s ended up, on his waist. “It’s just some superstrength fingerprint marks. It’s nothing.”

“I could have--”

“Jesus. Forget about it! Obviously you’ve never had good sex before if--”

“Bruises. I hurt you, I didn’t mean. I’m--”

Tony forces a laugh. “All in the name of a good time, or at least trying for one.”

“I could have--”

“Look,” Tony says. “I get that your precious morality is different, okay? But frankly I’m questioning whether you’ve ever had decent sex before if you think that that’s a bruise. You should have seen me after that wrestler I--”

“Stop it!” Steve looks horrified, looking over at the door to the kitchen to see if anyone’s there, then his horror morphs back into the anger that’s always simmering. It’s almost funny. Actually, it _is_ funny. Yeah, Tony’s a bad person yadda yadda. He can’t help it, and he doesn’t try to stop it: he laughs for real this time.

“Screw you. It’s not funny.” Steve’s glowering now.

“Yeah, we already did the ‘screw you’ routine.” Tony tips his head. “Unless you want to go again?”

Steve purses his lips together. “No. No, I don’t. We’re done. Done with this. I never should have--” He shakes his head. “We’re done with this.”

“Whoa, deja vu... freaky.” Tony cocks his head to the side. “I seem to remember this same conversation just a few weeks ago. And my ass is telling me we did. Do it again. Plus more.”

Steve flushes; Tony watches, fascinated, as it moves up his neck and into his cheeks. God, he’s gorgeous. Obnoxious and irritating, but gorgeous.

“Tony,” Steve says, low and angry. “I mean it. It’s messing with the team. And I think you know it. It’s not--It’s all messed up and. You’re messed up right now and--And I’m not very--” He shakes his head. “It’s not right.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Bored already. And you can stop slumming. You can go back to your... your morality and tradition now with a clean conscience. Consider this a one-off. Or more accurately, a two-off.”

Steve’s arms come across his chest. “What would you know about morality and--”

“Done here.” Tony sweeps past him and past everyone in the lounge area and on up his private stairwell to his own levels of the building. He doesn’t need to see the disgust on Steve’s face or think about how fucked up he is, that he let himself have sex with the guy. Let himself, ha! More like, threw himself at the guy. Steve had hardly had a choice.

~

Tony doesn’t do awkward. He doesn’t believe in it. He does like to make other people squirm, though. Yeah it’s immature but hey, you only go around once. And Cap’s just beautiful when he blushes, when he stammers and looks away because something’s embarrassed him or shocked him.

So it’s kind of a surprise when Cap doesn’t do any of those things when Tony alludes to the sex over the next few days, the few times they’re somehow in a room together. Steve’s quiet, and doesn’t respond to Tony’s jibes. Instead, he just _looks_ at Tony in that dismissive way he has, like Tony is dirt, like he’s thinking all the things he said back at the beginning: _strip away his suit and what is he_. 

Tony’s pretty careful to keep his insults veiled, so no one except Steve can get that they’re, well, jibes. The last thing he needs is other people on the team all over Tony’s case. Because inevitably everything is always Tony’s fault. Steve gets it, though, that Tony’s being an asshole in his direction; it’s evident in how he tenses minutely every time Tony speaks.

~

So wow, great, now they’re at another meeting. At SHIELD headquarters no less. Someone really is trying to kill Tony. This one is about... yes, again: the ever-rising estimate of debris sites with dangerous radiation levels. Steve is playing good soldier, resolutely staring at the corner and not looking at Tony.

Tony is getting really, really tired of meetings. Sign of maturity: he recognizes the reckless, fuck-it-all impulse growing inside of him. Sign of still being him: he wants to fuck it all anyway.

He sighs. “It’s really getting a bit out of hand, the incompetence of the people who assess the sites. Shouldn’t whether a site has enough radiation emanating out of it to power New York for a hundred years be something that, oh I don’t know, SHIELD’s operatives notice?” Tony asks, feet up on the table and head buried in his Starkphone. “Before actual people go in to clean them up, that is?”

“Yes,” Fury says, jaw clenched, looking like he lives up to his name. “It should.”

Tony wouldn’t want to be the minions that screwed up on that one, he’s gotta admit. “Even SHIELD isn’t usually this incompetent,” he says, pulling up the latest operational figures on the screen in front of him. There’s still an astonishing amount of debris to clean up, despite the fact they’ve all been working on it for-fucking-ever.

“Why don’t you give them a break,” Steve chimes in, quiet but intense. 

Everyone in the room turns to look at him. He’s been completely quiet, so it’s kind of weird that he pipes up now. Also, the hostility in his voice is kind of obvious. Hmm, interesting. 

“Well, I don’t know,” Tony says, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact there is lethal radiation coming from some of the sites we’re supposed to pull stuff from? Enough to end life as we know it? But I mean, don’t mind me.”

Steve scowls. It doesn’t make him less attractive, which is just unfair. Also, what the fuck is wrong with him, anyway? “Well, maybe you should consider for a change that it isn’t someone’s incompetence. Maybe you should look for other explanations.”

“What other explanations could there be? What, the debris suddenly spiked radioactive, when there were no anomalies before?”

Steve folds his arms across his chest. “Because things always make sense in this world these days...”

“Okay, fair point, gotta give you that one. But elements don’t suddenly degrade and throw off--” Tony frowns. 

Steve meets his eyes for the first time tonight, cocks his head almost like he can see Tony’s thoughts. His forehead furrows. 

Data, stored up somewhere in Tony’s freakish brain over the last weeks and weeks of pointless meetings, swirls around in his head. The voices in the room fade into the background. Various people try to call his name, but he ignores them. “Let him think,” he hears someone -- huh, Steve actually -- say to the room. 

“Paper, pen, better computer, updated data, all your records, anything that shows actual readouts on the things in the debris: chemical readouts, x-rays, analyses of the component parts,” Tony snaps, and then it’s a whirlwind of numbers and readouts and reports for a long time. He doesn’t even have to ask for coffee; it appears at intervals. He’s dimly aware of most everyone leaving to do other things, but when he snaps out of it ready to talk, they assemble within minutes. 

“Okay right, so, it follows a pattern. Basically, it’s normal, then it suddenly changes molecular structure and spikes hot. As much as it pains me to say it, SHIELD probably didn’t asses it incorrectly. It somehow has changed, _become_ radioactive, though that makes no sense.”

“Explanation?” Fury snaps.

Tony shakes his head. “Too many possibilities to even theorize. Except basically, something somehow is making it change and spike radiation where there wasn’t any before. Linked to the invasion, most likely, since all of the debris was from the battle, though even that isn’t certain.”

“Plan?” Coulson this time, and it’s still jarring to see him alive. His face is still grey and he’s moving stiffly, but his brain is all there; his tone if anything more pissed off than Fury’s. 

Steve clears his throat and presents a plan. Tony doesn’t even listen. He knows it’s a cautious, sensible plan, to gather data and do incremental tests. Of course.

“That’s a great plan if our goal is to allow lethal radiation from the remnants of a battle with aliens to randomly spew for years to come. No really, I salute you.”

Steve narrows his eyes. "You didn't even hear what I said."

Tony waves a dismissive hand. “Whatever, I don't have to. What we need to do is get in close to this stuff, analyze it in action, figure out what’s making it tick -- whether there’s a trigger of some kind, whether it’s something Loki left behind -- well duh it’s something he left behind almost certainly. And actually... what have we done with the other debris that spiked hot? After we picked it up we brought it to you guys; where did you put it?”

“Uh.” Clint’s eyes are big.

“Military nuclear containment facilities,” a functionary chimes in.

“Where?”

“Western United States, one in Montana and one in Colorado. In the boondocks... “

“Not boondocks enough if my guess is right, but... Fuck. Bring me eyes-on and instruments-on reports on everything you put out there. But the real question is, what makes some of it do this and the rest of it not?” He thinks for a moment. “ _If_ it’s not.” He snaps his fingers for the reports a harried functionary brings into the room. “How often is this happening now, do we at least know that? What’s the rate of increase in the frequency of these incidents? Also, I’m going to need a fast ride to wherever we threw this crap out, and/or someplace it’s spiking right now. I could go in the suit but it would be better for me to be working en route, not flying across the whole fucking country with my iron hanging out.”

“I’m going too.” Cap’s voice. 

“There’s no reason,” Tony snaps. “We don’t need careful strategy, we need action. Though...” he narrows his eyes and focuses on Steve’s hands. “In certain circumstances, you’re pretty good at that.”

Steve’s hands tighten around the pad he’s holding. Tony can’t help watching, fascinated, as he forces his fingers to go lax, probably by sheer force of super willpower. 

“Stark,” Coulson bites out, which only makes Tony want to push the envelope harder.

“Okay, do we even hear ourselves?” Tony asks. “Because speaking personally, I used to think about sex, drugs and rock n’roll, not actual alien lethally radioactive garbage leftover from a battle with lizard people.” He looks around the room. “Right?”

Clint eyes him across the table. “Pretty sure you can multi-task in that brain of yours, Stark.”

“Bingo. Give the man a cookie. You’re right! Lethal garbage _and_ drugs, rock n’roll and... yep, sex in there too! Funny how it keeps happening to me.” He grins at the room.

Steve steadfastly does not look at him.

~

They’re silent inside the military jet that speeds them West, and silent in the transport that takes them to the military base. Coulson sleeps the whole time, and Clint and Natasha, who insisted on coming along, are silent as well. Clint spends an inordinate amount of time calibrating his bow and Natasha is listening to her massive playlist (Tony checked) with earbuds. Tony works, mainly.

Being military, the trip takes about half the time it would commercial, and soon they’re at the site. There’s a conspicuous pile of debris that looks out of place on this barren plain, being sorted by an array of cranes, bulldozers and, yeah, soldiers.

“That stuff just came in,” the beefed-up guard says, pointing to the pile. “It’s from a couple of different sites. We get it here fast once someone notices it’s hot. It’s still not too bad; it’s safe at a distance for limited exposure.” He scowls. “If the pattern holds it’ll keep getting hotter hour by hour.” He nods his head to another area of the compound. “Got the hotter stuff in the ground already, and starting to get some of the worst in containment devices, but... something’s happening to the dirt above it...”

“Something?” Steve is wide awake now, practically at attention. 

The guard nods. “Follow me.”

They’re led over to the far part of the compound, where there are huge tanks and fields with all kinds of electronic monitors on them, guards at the perimeter. When he gets close enough, Tony can see the earth, which is scored by lines, like the earth is cracking on tiny faults. “I’d say that’s... not good.” 

Steve makes a little scoffing noise.

“Hey, ease up, Cap, it’s a scientific term. ‘Not good,’ meaning, creepy radioactive remnants from alien battle are splitting the earth.” He can’t help adding, “Or ‘not good,’ as in, ‘no one’s ever said Tony Stark’s not good in bed.” 

The guard laughs. Steve stiffens, but stays silent. It’s becoming a theme.

“So, your science people, your records, your readouts. Can I see them?”

The guard motions them over to a metal building that looks like a temporary command center. Tony starts walking, but is intercepted by Steve. “I need to talk to you. Now,” Steve says, low.

Tony shakes his head. “Done here. Come or don’t come.” He smirks. “Heh.”

He probably only imagines that Steve’s hands ball into fists. 

~ 

Steve’s completely silent again on the flight back home, eyes shut like he’s sleeping. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. It’s great. No annoying interruptions, just quiet and an occasional short conversation with Natasha or Clint. Tony can focus on the data the repository uploaded for him, the numbers marching on his screen with a story to tell, if only he can figure out what it is. He can feel an answer, a pattern, just out of reach, if only he could see it...

The landing is awesome; they descend rapidly like the military likes to, and they’re all back in a limo heading to the Tower before Tony knows it. Steve’s silence continues. “You in a bad mood, Cap?” Tony asks, because he’s a bad person. “Was it something I said? The steep descent?”

Steve narrows his eyes.

“Or maybe something I didn’t say? I did mention how fetchingly you fill out those fatigues, didn’t I?” Tony asks, ogling Steve while he reaches back into the limo for his luggage. “How masterfully you walked the perimeter of that radiation farm...”

Steve takes Tony’s elbow and steers him toward Tony’s private elevator. “Clint and Natasha can take their own. We’re going to talk.”

“Oooo, masterful. Only I’m not really into that at the moment, seeing as how I’m trying to, you know, save Earth and everything?”

“Now.”

Tony rolls his eyes and waves a hand to Clint and Natasha. “Do you mind? Cap has some feelings he needs to express. You know how it is.”

“Stark,” Steve all but growls. 

Tony picks at the lint on his jacket while the elevator ascends.

“You need to stop it,” Steve says, with no preliminaries.

“‘It’ being my stunning intelligence or my astounding bravery or my amazing sense of humor? Or wait, my incredible hotness, that’s it. Because granted, it can be a burden sitting in the same room with me and not jumping my--”

“Not _killing_ you,” Steve growls, pinning Tony up against the wall of the elevator effortlessly with one arm across his chest and a leg across his knees. “Stop it. Just--”

Tony goes liquid, stops struggling. “Go on, do it. Make me.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, no. Don’t. Don’t do that, Tony.”

“You can make me. You know it would be hot, you know you want it,” Tony goads, but there’s something off here, something about the way Steve’s face looks or Tony’s stomach feels...

“Don’t,” Steve whispers, bringing his forehead to Tony’s and leaning in, just breathing there. “ _Don’t._ ” There’s raw feeling in it, though Tony’s at a loss as to what that feeling is.

“Since you’re holding me immobilized against a wall with, like, your pinky, I don’t think you’re the one who should be begging.” Tony’s attempt at sounding bored falls a bit flat to his ears. “Okay, the tone of that felt a little flat. To my ears. How about you? Huh? Trying too hard?”

Steve huffs out a breath of air -- it’s warm on Tony’s face. He’s still got his forehead leaning on Tony’s. “ _Please_ ”.

Tony nods after a long beat, or tries to; his head is pretty much immobilized by Steve’s head leaning on his. “Yeah, sure, okay.”

Steve keeps talking, like he didn’t hear or doesn’t believe Tony. “I know everyone else can do that, can joke about stuff, serious stuff, not that it’s serious to you, but for me-It’s too hard for me to focus when you’re doing that, about this.”

Tony sighs. “I said okay. You want a notarized promise? You want me to sign something? Do you carry those around: Contract not to engage in homoerotic banter during work hours?”

Steve’s hands relax on Tony, but he stays where he is for another second or two. He shakes his head. “I really want to kill you a lot of the time.”

Tony dusts himself off when Steve stands back. Looks like the elevator got to his floor a long time ago. He motions and Steve exits along with him. “You and all other sentient creatures on the planet. Plus some non-sentient ones, I think.”

“Tony, the thing is, I--” 

Tony walks toward the more private areas of his floor with Cap in tow. “Say no more, say no more. I know this one by heart. It never happened, we never had hot monkey sex of any kind, let alone homosexual.”

“You are so--”

“Like I said,” Tony says, “I’ve heard it all before. But don’t worry: it never happened. It was a mistake, one that never happened.”

Steve grab’s Tony’s elbow. “That’s not--”

Tony finally turns toward Steve. “Look,” Tony says. “I won’t talk about it on missions. I won’t talk to other people about it. Take it or leave it. Because I am fucking done. I’m not interested in ever revisiting any of this with you. I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the last man on the planet. Well, hmm, strike that actually. I probably--”

“Tony.” Steve’s voice sounds hoarse.

Tony can’t do this any more -- he is out of here. He shakes his head and holds up his hand to hold Steve off from saying anything more. “Not a single fucking other word. Never again, we both agree. Biggest mistake ever. Clearly my brain was suffering some sort of seizure, since you are about as opposite of my type as, as... as an opposite thing from its opposite.”

“How would you know? You don’t know anything about me, not really.” Now Steve sounds pissy again.

“I know everything I need to, have from the very beginning. Wrapped up in the flag, longing for some mythic past morality.” Tony jabs Steve in the chest. “I’ll tell you something: Your uniform is the fucking flag of this great land, which trust me, wasn’t some perfect land of opportunity for most people back then and though it’s made strides since then, isn’t yet now. And it’s a country that gets its jollies spending more in a day on weapons of mass destruction than it would take to feed all the hungry kids in the world who just need a fucking square meal, for years.”

Steve stares at Tony intently, stubbornly not getting pissier. His forehead draws together in that little frown that means he’s thinking about something. About Tony, maybe. Never a good thing. Tony takes a breath. “And just because you can’t get past the immorality of fucking a guy, that doesn’t give you the right to judge other people who--” Tony takes a breath. “You know what? Why am I even wasting my time. It’s not worth it. You think I don’t know anything about you, well, you don’t know anything about me. But I’ll tell you this: everything you think you know, multiply it by a hundred. Oh, and please see yourself out.”

He makes sure to slam the door on the way into his bedroom. He hopes Steve flinches. He undoubtedly won’t, but. Tony can hope.

~ ~

Okay, Tony will say this for the guy: he’s a pro. Steve. He’s been nothing but professional since their Talk, when it comes to his professional life of... “Pepper, is being Captain America a profession?”

Pepper raises one perfect eyebrow across the conference room table.

Oh. RIght. Stark Industries Board of Directors meeting.

“Just...thinking about tax writeoffs,” he ad libs and hell, not a bad idea now he mentions it.

The Board members seem to find it easy to ignore his outburst. They’ve had a fair amount of practice. Pepper, not so much with the easy ignoring: she corners him the second the meeting is over. “Not another step.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t give me that. Tony, what’s up?”

“I-Nothing.”

She stares at him some more.

He sighs and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Not sure whether we do this?”

“We do,” she says resolutely. “I told you about Nate, remember?”

Tony frowns. “An amusing anecdote about a first date gone horribly wrong.”

Pepper laughs, and it sounds wonderful. Tony smiles at her and she smiles back. “I know it’s not easy,” she says. “Not for me, either, you know.”

“I know.” He fiddles with the hem of her jacket, looking down. “So you and Nate...You actually told me about more than the first date, sounded promising?”

“He’s kind of an elitist academic prick,” she whispers. “But... maybe? It kind of works, because everything else about him is pretty great. And I’m not exactly perfect myself.”

“Could have fooled me.” Tony looks up and meets her eyes. “Are you okay, really? Pep, you need to be happy. Really, really happy, okay?”

“I’m getting there,” she says, matching him for seriousness. “And how you feel about that, that’s how I feel about you. What I want for you. You get that?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s just. I fucked up I think, with Steve?”

Pepper’s eyes widen. “Can I watch sometime?”

He swats her arm. “It kind of messed with the team, but we’ve-- _I’ve_ sworn off the whole thing, so.” He swallows. “He thinks I’m a total worthless asshole. Can’t say I disagree, so.”

“You know,” she says quietly. “I think he was a real jerk to you, right from the start. Judging you the way he did right off the bat. I think--I think it wasn’t about you, really, but something from his past, maybe.”

Tony swallows past the lump in his throat. “Pep...”

She holds up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve screwed up with him too, but. You’re a good man, Tony.” She puts her hand over his heart. “If he can’t see that, then he’s not worth a second’s thought.” She leers. “Though there’s nothing wrong with hot rebound once-offs.”

“I don’t deserve a friend like you.” Tony smiles at her.

“Yes, you do. That’s what I’m saying. But I also think... I think there’s a reason he’s been pushing so hard against you. And a reason he makes you so crazy.” Her eyes are warm on Tony. “He’s a good man, too, I think, though granted he’s been a jerk to you. There’s something special there, potentially.”

Tony snorts. “Frenemies?”

Pepper laughs. “Maybe. Or maybe you need someone, I don’t know, who’s just as-I don’t even know the word-just as bullheaded as you. Just. Don’t be stupid. You hear me? Don’t be stupid. He’s so young, really, if you think about it, isn’t he?”

Tony shakes his head. “Not in any way that matters.”

“Okay,” she says. “But remember what I said. No sabotaging things because you think you don’t deserve them. You deserve good things, Tony Stark.”

He brushes a strand of hair out of her eye. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, you know that, right?”

“You’d better believe it!” She grins at him. “Now let’s talk turkey on the restructuring plan.”

Tony rolls his eyes.

She lowers her voice. “And don’t be stupid.”

“Genius here, remember,” he says as they head out the door, but he feels warm all over. 

~ ~ ~


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve accidentally end up having to spend time together, when a senior citizen who happens to be a WWII vet calls in the authorities over a suspicious radiation reading. In the process, Tony learns some history, discovering the past maybe wasn't as sheltered as he thought it was. At the same time, Steve comes up against some memories from his own past, and that's as much as I'll say right now about that. 
> 
> Working together on something different like this gives each of them just a glimpse into a different side of each other. Will it be enough to help them bridge the huge gaps between them at this point?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A substantial amount of research went into things that start being referred to in this chapter. I will put up my references in a bit for the New York City lgbt history and wartime lgbt stuff generally. Suffice it to say for now that everything referenced is based on real history.
> 
> As to some of the war stories/experiences here, they are lifted straight from two different dear departed family members of mine. So in a way, this chapter is dedicated to them.

Things are not-good between him and Steve for a long time. Tony mainly stops with the sexual innuendo. It’s impossible to get rid of all of it, though, so it’s maybe more accurate to say he’s brought it down to the level he’d use with anyone. Without that, they’re left with, well, hostility usually, although they’re both fairly obviously trying to rein it in for the good of the order. Usually one of them will lose patience with the other after a while and say something cutting. Usually, but not always, the other one will more or less walk away. If they don’t, it’s... hostile. 

Mainly they just avoid or ignore each other, though, which helps in a way, but puts a damper on the whole “team who plays together” thing Tony was going for when he invited them all to live in the Tower. Because he’s stubborn, he keeps participating in weekly team meetings and dinners. He supposes Steve is stubborn, too, because he does the same.

The whole “mainly ignoring each other’s existence” thing works just fine for Tony overall. He can’t help but get a weird feeling in his gut when he looks at Steve, a feeling like he’s forgetting something important, or maybe that’s whatever is niggling in the back of his head about the radiation problem. Anyway, it’s all there jumbled up somehow, but doesn’t affect his daily life, which is still depressingly full of garbage-man duties, with the occasional “break” to handle some Stark Industries emergency. 

There seems to be a dearth of Villains right now, which makes everything pretty monotonous. Instead, there’s a never-ending series of jobs requiring Captain America and Iron Man to work together, both in the field and on investigation and strategy to deal with the radioactive battle debris problem. 

Iron Man and Cap do okay. Not great, but they’re mainly able to keep their interactions clipped, professional. Somehow their hero-versions can turn off most of the animosity and focus on their common goal of getting the job done. By mutual unspoken agreement, they always have at least one other Avenger or someone like Coulson with them when they have to work together for long periods of time, and they keep the conversation to work stuff. 

The “debris concern,” as SHIELD so delicately puts it, is growing. The stuff out on the prairie is still emanating radiation, and the military reports its attempts at burying it -- and keeping it buried --are requiring stronger and stronger measures. Worse -- probably worse -- there have started to be reports of small pieces of debris in civilian areas that spike suddenly radioactive. Nothing lethal yet, about the amount you’d get from an X-ray. Except unlike any normal X-ray. An Earth X-Ray at least. The only reason they know is that a few detectors have started going off, random places. At first they thought it was some new threat, but it turned out that even tiny fragments from the battle could turn radioactive -- or whatever you wanted to call it. So basically, pieces from the battle are spontaneously spiking dangerous, creating a monotonous but busy schedule for the agents charged with dealing with them. Of course, the Avengers sometimes ends of dealing with it too, depending.

In what little spare time he has, Tony tinkers in the workshop and tries to work out what is bothering him about the debris issue, and when he can’t do that anymore, he works on his robots. 

For whatever reason, the whole “sex, drugs and rock n’roll” routine he had going on for a while has lost its luster. Eh, not that it really had much luster to begin with this time, but it was... necessary. So these days, any spare time he has, he pretty much spends in the workshop with his bots and his tech, which suits him just fine. He’s usually alone, but sometimes Bruce works alongside him or Pepper drops in when there’s some important Stark Industries business. Seeing Pepper is wonderful, always, but also... hard sometimes. Because of course now, she always leaves.

~

Tony manages to escape early from the Stark Industries meeting Pepper conned him into attending, so when an emergency call comes in he figures what the hell. It’s a blanket request for Avengers or top clearance SHIELD backup just a couple of blocks from where he is, Brooklyn. It’s at some senior citizens home, which... really? Whatever, though, he’s game. Save other people the trouble, get it handled _one two three_ in Stark fashion. 

Normally he leaves all the little incidents to the SHIELD team, or the other Avengers, but the sun’s out and there’s a snap in the air that says Fall is coming and he hasn’t been in Brooklyn other than today’s meeting for... years, he supposes, and the restless something he’s been feeling wants to do something other than lab work or boring cleanup, so, whatever, he needs to do something impulsive, even though it’s something as small as this. 

He’s already walking as he talks into his microphone. “JARVIS, tell them I’ll get it. Happy, I’m hoofing it. Why don’t you go for a spin and meet me there in a bit.”

It’s an older building, senior care home, and the lobby smells like air freshener over day-old garbage, mixed in with something medicinal. Not Tony’s idea of a place to spend his old age -- not that he’s likely to make it that far -- but hey, there are some old guys playing chess in an ill-lit alcove, and a couple of ladies all dressed up watching television on a decade-old set, so at least they’re not, well, alone. 

The middle aged guy at the front desk barely looks up from his newspaper and motions with his thumb over his shoulder to an even-darker corridor. “Fifty eight is that way. Visiting hours end at four.”

“Visiting hours? What, aren’t these adults?” 

The guy eyes him over the rim of his paper and narrows his eyes. “Some people are too disturbing to the residents to be allowed at all. Got a hot list of those...”

“I bet you do,” Tony says, holding up a placating hand, because he really is in a good mood so he’s going to let this asshole get away with this. For now.

He finds the room number the message specifies and knocks.

“Yeah!” an old but vigorous voice answers. “It’s open.”

Tony lets himself in and has to give his eyes a second to adjust to the crappy lighting. There’s an old, white-haired man sitting in a wheelchair at a small table. His back is straight and he’s motioning vigorously. He’s wearing -- ha! -- a velveteen dinner jacket and a gorgeous bright scarf, which contrasts with the dull interior of the room. There’s a man with broad shoulders sitting on a wooden chair next to the table, back to Tony, looking at something on that table that the old man’s pointing to and laughing. For one brief nanosecond, Tony doesn’t realize who it is. 

“Got myself two today, I see,” the old man says, smiling at Tony. “Mr. Stark himself!”

The man sitting at the table whirls around, laughter cut off abruptly. Huh, it’s Steve. He looks surprised -- and not in a good way -- to see Tony. Feeling’s mutual, that’s for sure, and it probably shows on Tony’s face, too. “Uh,”Steve says, “I was right next door, so I... ” He frowns like he’s remembered why they’re here. “I called it in; it’s definitely hot. There’s a team coming. I’m just thanking Mr. Jones here.” He frowns even harder. “The management at this place didn’t take him seriously.”

“No problem, no problem, I’ll just...” Tony eases back towards the door.

“Not so fast, young man!” the old guy says. His eyes twinkle at Tony. “Come on, can’t you sit a spell, tell an old man a story or two to liven up my day? There’s only so much a pink scarf and a fabulous attitude can do, you know...” It looks like he’s going to wink at Tony, who can’t help but be a little charmed. The guy’s outrageous.

“Well...”

Steve clears his throat and scoots his chair over, motions to the one remaining piece of furniture in the room, another simple wooden chair. “I need to be going soon anyway. You can finish the, uh, investigation.”

Tony sits. “Nah, I’ll just sit a minute, then scoot. I just answered the call randomly.”

“Look at this!” the old guy crows. “Mr. America and Stark himself, both sitting here with me. Never woulda thought it. I think it might just take two superheroes to deal with me, anyway, boys,” he smirks, leaning forward and peering at them as intently as possible with his hazy eyes. He turns to Steve. “Now keep telling your story, how you found the gym.” He settles back and looks at Steve expectantly. 

Steve glances at Tony, then away, and looks almost... uncomfortable? “Well, it’s just. I stumbled on it one day when I was, uh, walking around. Remembered it from back in the day, all the working class guys would come box after their shifts let out. Sometimes I’d do odd jobs for a penny down there or--” He stops abruptly and shakes his head. “Anyway, it felt more real to me, not as clean and prettified and all, like the modern gyms.”

“Wouldn’t want it to be clean or effective,” Tony mutters reflexively. 

Steve darts him a sharp glance, all angry eyes. The old man doesn’t seem to have heard him, though: “Yep, everything’s all sanitized now, isn’t it? I remember a boxer or two myself...” He’s quiet for a moment, gaze far-off. “Well, anyway, Mr. Stark, as I was saying to Captain Rogers here, my name is Jones, Charlie Jones. Call me Charlie, call me any time at all.” He laughs and adjusts the knot of his scarf. “I certainly know who you are. Damned fine thing you did, taking your brain away from the weapons makers. I think your dad would have approved... it was different back then, when we were fighting Hitler...” He trails off and looks like he’s in another place for a while.

Steve shifts uncomfortably in his place and doesn’t look at Tony. After silence continues for a while, he clears his throat. “Mr. Jones was, uh, telling me that he’s ninety three, though he doesn't seem it. Guess he came to New York real young, and has had a real interesting life.”

Jones snorts. “Interesting is one word for my life.” He smiles at Cap in a way that’s almost flirtatious. Well, _is_ flirtatious. And actually, now that Tony thinks about it, he wonders what Steve is making of this guy. He probably doesn’t get it yet. “Interesting for a lot of years, until I couldn’t see much any more or walk too well and ended up here.” Jones -- Charlie -- sighs. “Well, no use mooning about that. Gotta say, I’ve lived a full life and that’s no lie.” 

“Mr. Jones was originally from Texas,” Steve chimes in, when it’s quiet for a while. “A small town.” 

“Your kind of place, I suppose,” Tony mutters at Steve.

Steve glowers and opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Jones is talking again, obviously not having heard Tony. “Yep, I got out of there the minute I could rub two dimes together, let me tell you!” He grins. “New York City, only took me four days and nights riding the rails. It was back in the day when you could do that, when lots of folks did that. I was sixteen and I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life as the City.” He gets a dreamy look on his face. “Still never have.”

“I hear you,” Tony says into the quiet, then shuts his mouth quickly. 

Steve shoots him a glance under his lashes that Tony can’t interpret; it’s measuring, maybe.

Charlie gets lively again and in the next five minutes they find out in quick succession that he used to work in Harlem nights, back in the day, then after the war, in the Garment District. Served in the Army, Patton’s Army. 

His half-blind eyes light up in the middle of a story about the war, like he only just fully realized that this is the actual Captain America sitting here in his cramped little room. “Hey! I was at one of your shows! One of the best days of my life...Lots to look at, if you know what I mean,” he says with a leer.

“All those chorus girls, huh?” Steve smiles at him.

“Well now.” Mr. Jones peers at them both assessingly, but then shakes his head as if to dismiss the necessity of whatever he was looking for. “The truth is, I covered it up to get in the service, but before that and after I never have, and I’m not gonna do it now, even with Captain America and Iron Man themselves here with me.” He leans in says conspiratorially. “It wasn’t the ladies I was ogling, if you get my drift, though I made it look like it was. That outfit of yours didn’t exactly leave a lot to the imagination, plus all those boys who came with your show looked pretty spiffy in those fancy uniforms.”

The back of Steve’s neck turns red, but he manages to say something not too horrendous. “Uh. Well, it was quite a show, huh?”

“That it was. I hope I haven’t shocked you too badly.” He turns and winks at Tony. “Now Mr. Stark here, I imagine I didn’t shock very much at all.”

“You would be right, Mr. Jones.” Tony grins at him. “And kudos to you for being out. Wow, it can’t have been easy.”

“No. But I’m just ornery enough I couldn’t handle it any other way.” Mr. Jones’ eyes are twinkling now, despite their haze. “Say,” he says to Steve, “I wonder if you ever caught my show before the war, down in Harlem. You ever sneak into the Savoy or the one, oh crap, it was on 155th, the, the something Palace -- got it, the Rockland Palace?” He winks at Tony. “The rich gentlemen from uptown knew where to come if they had certain... preferences.” He pats Steve’s hand. “Did you know _that_?”

Tony figures this is about the point where Steve says something offensive and shuts down. He doesn’t do either, though. His voice sounds a bit choked, but he manages, “Uh. Well, me and Bucky saw some things, sometimes, Mr. Jones. People. We were just poor kids, barefoot half the time. But sometimes we’d do shoeshine down there. I used to stand outside and listen to the music at the clubs down there. Jazz, torch songs....” Steve does manage to keep judgment out of his voice, so Tony will hand him that.

“Charlie. Calling me other things makes me feel like I’m ninety three years old.” He winks.

Steve nods stiffly. “Charlie.“

There’s silence in the small room for a moment. Charlie has a happy smile on his face. “It was the one place in all of New York, all of America maybe, where everyone was welcome, no matter their color, or who they liked to snuggle up with, nights. Even a white boy who liked beefcake men and designing dresses.”

Steve shifts in position. Tony gives him his best quelling look. “That’s pretty awesome,” Tony says. Apparently the olden days were a bit less innocent than people think -- at least in some places. Steve stays quiet. It figures.

“‘Course, there were places in France like that,” Charlie adds. “Didn’t get to spend much time enjoying them, though, over there. There were clubs, though, full of men, all men who wanted the same thing, men in uniform from all over the world, all knowing they might die the next day...” his voice trails off, wistful. 

Tony glances at Steve's face: he's wearing an expression Tony doesn't recognize. Almost... No, Tony doesn't know how to characterize it.

Just like that, Steve's expression gets back to neutral. “The country is grateful to you for your service, you know.” Steve says it quietly, but in that tone he gets that lets you know he means every single word of it. “I knew guys in Patton’s Army. Most of them didn’t come back.”

Charlie lowers his voice. “My buddy, George... He died in my arms. We were hiding from some sharpshooters in some hay on the push to Bastogne and...” Charlie bows his head. “Took him a few hours to die, after I dragged him into the barn. Miracle they didn’t come in and kill me too, but they were in a hurry and I stayed real quiet.”

“I’m sorry.” Steve puts a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. 

“Me, too,” Tony says quietly.

After a moment Charlie looks up and smiles. “Well, hell, you boys didn’t come just to shoot the breeze with me. It sure beats listening to the crap that’s on television these days. But I’m pretty sure you wanted some info on the hot spot. Everyone always laughed at me, keeping a Geiger Counter here, but it was old and I’ve always liked equipment like that, stuff I worked with back at the tail end of my service days. I like to tinker, keep things working.” He winks outrageously. “When I’m not sewing _divine_ creations out of silk, that is. I’m quite in demand still among the drag queens you know,” he adds conspiratorially. “Though I can’t see much to work any more. Or read my romances... I hear there are lots with boys now, pity.” He sighs and Tony looks closer at his eyes and can’t help but wonder what the state of the art is for his condition.

Steve coughs into his hand, interrupting Tony’s line of thought. Right. “We can get you some, you know,” Tony says acerbically to Steve. “The romances with boys?”

“Investigation now,”Steve says, ignoring Tony completely. “Tell us some more, Mr. Jones. When did you first start noticing those readings?”

It turns out Charlie’s been complaining to management about the readings for quite a long time. Days. Weeks, even. “They never listen to us, but I got pretty concerned when it got up to the yellow zone. And it’s strange how it bounces around from okay to up near red now. That’s not any radiation I ever heard of. So I got to thinking maybe it had to do with those alien lizard things you all saved us from.” He leans in close to Steve and winks. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I don’t recognize alien leftovers, right darlin’?”

Steve looks shellshocked for a moment and Tony’s about ready to hurt him, but he finally nods. “People don’t respect their elders like they should, these days..”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlie says with a wicked sparkle in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have believed me either. But...” he frowns and darts a glance at the door.

“Something else,” Tony says, sick swoop in his gut. He’s seen that look before: children, old people, some women.

“Yes,” Charlie says low and quiet.

“Tell us,” Tony says.

“You can trust us,” Steve adds, putting his hand on Charlie’s arm and darting a defiant look at Tony over his shoulder, as if he should get points or something for touching the gay man. Tony rolls his eyes, but leans in closer to listen to what Charlie has to say. Tony’s found from experience that people tend to get away with doing bad things to children and old people. People tend to discredit what they say and it’s... not good.

Thirty seconds later Tony’s physically holding Steve back from killing the manager of the place. Literally. It’s not easy holding back a super soldier from killing someone. It’s not fun, either, especially when you would like to kill them yourself. “Look,” Tony murmurs so only Steve can hear, “I want to kill him myself. Slowly. Probably stuff the Medicare receipts he’s pocketed into his mouth while the residents club him to death with the food he held back from them. But you’re progressing so much as a person. I’d hate to see you locked into a boring routine. Like the one at the state penitentiary.”

Steve pushes Tony’s hands off him with the fingers of one hand. “Not going to kill him,” he says, but he’s breathing hard and he’s flushed and the tips of his ears are red. 

“You sure about that?” Tony shifts so he’s in Steve’s path again. Obviously, Steve could run him right over or move around him, but at least he’s slowing him down. Slightly. Giving him time to think.

Steve huffs out a huge breath, leans over and just breathes, hands on his knees. “Okay. I’m okay now.”

Tony stares at him. “I didn’t know you could get this mad. I mean, other than at me. At least, not so fast.”

Steve laughs. It comes out sounding funny, like he’s still so mad his body is confused by the laughing. “If you knew how many fights I used to start! Bucky tried everything to get me to stop. Finally he just gave in, backed me up.” He pushes up to a stand and smiles at Tony. It’s a smile Tony’s not sure he’s seen before. “I think there were betting pools.” He shakes his head. “It’s a miracle I lived past about fifteen, honestly.”

Tony finds himself smiling back, against his will. That’s the most he’s ever heard Steve talk about the past. Huh. “I think I know which side I’d bet on, even when you were ninety pounds dripping wet or whatever.”

“Me too,” Charlie breaks in, smiling dazzlingly up at Steve.

Steve frowns. “Okay, time to go meet with the owner of this... place.”

“I’m coming with you.” Tony pats Charlie on the back. “Don’t worry. I’ll back him up. He’s fragile, you know..” He winks at him.

“Just be careful,” Steve says over his shoulder on their way down the hall. “Bucky said cleaning up after I started stuff was an operational hazard.” He frowns, like he’s remembering who he’s talking to, and what Tony’s actually like. “Though I doubt _you’ll_ have to worry about that.”

“Obviously,” Tony snaps.

~

An hour later they’ve got the scumbag owner of the retirement home, plus his confederates, safely ensconced in an FBI van heading to headquarters, and not just one, but three tiny pieces of weirdly-radioactive battle debris, sent off to SHIELD in a shielded van. The home itself is supposedly at safe levels, so Tony calls a couple of people and gets them to bring some help in and make some followup things happen, until whoever is in charge of that stuff can get their act together.

Also, Steve didn’t kill anyone, which Tony’s counting as a win, considering it took the home’s owner longer than it should have to figure out you don’t want to lie to Captain America. Especially not about old people. Ladies. Veterans. Hell, you just don’t want to lie to him, okay.

It feels... weird, to not be slinging insults at each other. “Hey, you did pretty good not pulling out the ‘family morality’ crap with your new boyfriend Charlie,” Tony says when things are too-quiet in the back of the limo he called to come collect them.

Steve’s head flies up and he narrows his eyes. “Can’t you for once leave one single thing alone?”

“Uh. You remember who you’re talking to, right?”

“Genius, billionaire, philanthropist. Does that cover it?”

Tony’s hands ball into fists. “You forgot, immoral.”

“ _Immoral_ is wasting all the money, money your dad worked so hard to--”

Fortunately, Happy’s made record time and they’re at the Tower. “Done here.” Tony slams the car door and gets into his private elevator before Steve even leaves the car.

~ 

He’s surprised when a bit later Steve finds him in his workshop. Tony’s concern over the radiation issue has ratcheted higher, and he’s spending some quality one-on-one time with the data. He’s got a headache that’s pounding at his temples and he’s really in no mood to talk to anyone, let alone Mr. Morality.

Tony ignores him until Steve finally says, stiff, “I wanted to... There are some things I’ve said to you, back at the beginning, that--”

Tony doesn’t even look up.

“This would be easier if you’d look at me.” Steve sounds constipated.

Tony doesn’t move and instead starts typing furiously. He can practically feel Steve’s blood pressure rising.

Steve’s feet pace back and forth, then come to an abrupt halt. “Fine,” he says. “I think I have things I should say, like--”

“Would you just fucking get out of here,” Tony says. “It’s pathetic and embarrassing. Just go.”

There is total silence and then the sound of Steve’s feet walking away, the elevator doors. Then complete silence. Good. _Good_.

~ ~ ~


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The threat from the debris grows. The problems between Tony and Steve bleed over into Iron Man and Cap's working relationship. Cap does something Cap-like. Iron Man races against time. Tony makes a discovery -- and a mental adjustment or two -- that may affect their relationship in subtle and big ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The things with the coins is, yeah, straight from a beloved departed family member.
> 
> On a side note, two scenes in this chapter have been sketched out in outline form at least for a very long time. Thanks to people at write_15 for their encouragement on the latter one especially. I have such a strong image in my head for the things in that scene, I wish I was a visual artist. Hopefully it works okay in written form!
> 
> (Also, fyi I do make editing changes after I post these babies, so if you by chance are downloading, bear that in mind. Usually the edits aren't huge, but they are fairly continuous, haha. Also! If you happen to spot a plot or continuity problem (or any other problem), feel free to email me.. There is a LOT going on at this point, various minor plot threads in the background, and even though I'm still doing this without beta on purpose, it's difficult to hold all the threads in the right place...)

So that pretty much kills any slight progress that might have been happening between them, Tony shutting Steve down like that. It’s fine; Steve doesn’t refer to it -- or anything else personal for that matter-- again.

It’s better this way, just business.

Steve stays out of Tony’s way during downtimes, doing... whatever he does. Tony basically stops going to the common floor of the Tower. The few times he goes down there, Steve’s not around anyway, not even in the gym. The others report that he’s spending a lot of time alone in his quarters, and on late-night walks through the city or on other errands that take him out for long periods of time.

Twice when Tony decides he needs to make an effort to socialize with the group, Steve’s actually there in the lounge area, but off to the side, in a chair in the corner, writing or drawing into a small sketchbook. The lamp Steve trains on the paper surrounds him in a sort of golden glow, and he doesn’t even look up at Tony at all. He looks... alone. Like a painting of someone in another century. Tony socializes fitfully with the other Avengers and leaves quickly. He ignores the weird feeling in his stomach.

Other times, the times Steve isn’t there, he considers the elevator button for Steve’s floor, some weird compulsion making him want to push it, check on him. But he doesn’t. Of course not. Good riddance that he’s finally leaving Tony alone. All they do is piss each other off even worse if they have to be in proximity.

Tony does think maybe he’ll run into him at Charlie’s when he visits the nursing home (which is looking decidedly better, fresh paint and a new staff doing wonders) on some followup business, but he doesn’t. He knows Steve comes to see Charlie, though, not only because of the ratty sweatshirt left on the corner chair and the balled-up drawing in the trash can, but because Charlie mentions his visits sometimes, in between war stories. Tony’s always fiddling with something while Charlie talks, since he brings his side project along. That’s a good distraction, because there are stories Tony doesn’t really want to hear, things he doesn’t want to think about. All those people dying cold and alone. War. Weapons.

Iron Man and Captain America do okay. Kind of. Actually, no, the anger has finally bled into that relationship too. There’s a definite strain between them. A lot of silence. It feels weird not to be trading insults or “catch the reference” half-jokes. They communicate in the smallest number of words necessary, clipped and businesslike. Tony can’t help but watch the lines of Cap’s shoulders, tense under the tight material. Like they’re carrying a lot of weight.

Whatever, it’ll pass. It was Steve who started the whole insults thing anyway, all those months ago on the helicarrier, disdain coloring his voice when he bore right down to the heart of who Iron Man was, and wasn’t. He’d been right, really. But that didn’t mean he didn’t start it. Granted, Tony’s self-aware enough to know he’s shut Steve down from apologizing more than once. And has not been exactly a shining beacon of good behavior himself. Still, it’s probably better this way, keeping things professional. Better for everyone. When they try for anything friendlier, it just seems to make things worse. It’s honestly getting tiring, but Tony can’t really help his mouth; it’s like Cap’s a red flag to a bull. And Cap seems to be the same way about him: generally speaking he’s unfailingly polite to everyone else.

So as much as possible now, they work alone. Unspoken agreement: Cap or Iron Man answers the call, one or the other, unless it’s like, alien-invasion level stuff.

~

The weird ‘radiation spiking from formerly normal battle debris’ problem continues, worsens. Tony’s headache, and the weird feeling at the back of his brain, does too. It’s like there’s a solution just _there_ , ready for him to grab, if only he could see it. The niggling feeling that they’re all missing something important grows. He and Bruce spend a lot of hours in the lab looking at data and theorizing. There must be some sort of time bomb aspect to it, which worries Tony on a deep level, because that means Loki left something, somehow, or the Chitauri did. Some time-release radiation or something like that; that’s their current working theory. And that means there could be more problems waiting to erupt.

Steve spends a lot of time retrieving debris from areas near people and getting it to somewhere shielded or far away from cities. Tony -- Iron Man -- should maybe go along too, but he’s busy trying to figure out what’s causing the problem, and plus, Steve has made it more than obvious he’s happy to go alone.

There’s another endless conference thing at SHIELD where they sit around and try to figure out what the hell is going on. There’s a huge map with different colored overlays for places they’ve found radioactive debris. It’s spreading, like a cancer, tiny particles of what once were New York buildings and roads and other things apparently carried on the wind or in rivers, whatever; Tony and Bruce had figured out a while ago that even miniscule pieces of things were capable of emitting large amounts of the radiation, once they started emitting any.

So far it’s only in the U.S. and Canada, but Tony’s sure the Pacific won’t stop it; Cap’s having to go further and further west on his missions. It’s kind of amazing it hasn’t shown up in Asia yet, actually, given the weather patterns this time of year, as particles of battle debris undoubtedly have already been swept up in the water cycle and returned to Earth in rain and now winter’s coming, snow.

Tony’s got a creeping Bad Feeling listening to the government experts as they claim they can contain all the radiation and keep it from hurting anyone. He doesn’t think he’s the only skeptical one. He’ll say this about Cap, he’s not someone who just buys government bullshit about “it’s all just fine and dandy” without question, nor is Bruce. Natasha and Clint, obviously not either. It’s actually kind of funny in a weird way, how the Avengers are all cynical about government and business -- and personal -- motivations. His kind of people, really. The only thing is, not exactly the kind of people who are the team player type, not without some history behind them.

Coulson’s not there, which worries Cap, who at one point actually mutters, “He’s got too much integrity to lie to our faces.” Tony looks at him then -- something he doesn’t do much these days -- compelled by the insight that shows. And the cynicism; he didn’t know Steve had it in him. Steve’s face looks pinched.

Something about the map on the wall keeps pulling Tony’s attention back to it. There’s red to indicate radiation, brown to indicate known debris from the invasion, green to indicate... Tony sits up straight, interrupts whatever conversation has been buzzing around him for... who knows how long. “What’s the green?” A table full of heads turn to look at him. He’s used to that. “On the map? The green, what does it stand for? Chop chop.” He thinks he can guess, but he wants confirmation.

“Our people, searching, cleaning up. All our people: armed forces, search and rescue, you superhero types...”

“Right.” Tony shakes his head. “It was right in front of our noses and I didn’t see it, damn it.”

The faces are all still turned to him.

“Oh right, I forgot.” He barely restrains himself -- kind of -- from rolling his eyes. “Processing time.” Bruce is sitting forward, eyes intent on the big screen. Tony can almost _see_ his brain working. Yeah, he’s going to get it any second if he hasn’t already. On cue, Bruce’s fingers tighten around the pen he’s holding. Just in case it’s a bit too much excitement, Tony whacks Bruce’s fingers with a rolled-up meeting agenda. “Now, now, no stressing out, Doctor Banner. Well, except for, you know, panic. That could make sense right about now.”

Everyone’s still staring, though Steve keeps turning to look up at the screen, frowning, so he’s about to get it or already has as well.

“People, people, it’s just, I’m pretty fucking sure that if we go back and access the records we’ll find out that the radiation spiked when people got anywhere close. Say, oh, I don’t know...” He squints up at the screen. “Probably triggered by approach within a few yards.”

“But why--” a functionary begins.

Tony cuts him off. “The debris was centered in an urban area, crowded, so people were close to a lot of it from the beginning. That meant some of the radiation was triggered almost right away. Oh, hell, maybe there’s a dormant period, but once that was over... But anyway, a lot of this stuff was in cordoned-off areas of the City, or further afield -- a lot further afield in some cases -- and that stuff wasn’t triggered right away. There weren’t any people near it. It took our government’s people getting close to set it off.” He holds up his hands. “Hey, it’s just a guess.” A second ticks off. “A genius guess, but still: guess. We need to go. Come on, Doctor Banner, let’s push the genius button and see what we find.”

“Well, hang on a minute,” Cap says, voice tight. “I think we need to look at why or how that’s happening.”

Tony raises his eyebrows. “You’re not questioning that it _is_?”

“No. It doesn’t make any sense any other way. Otherwise why wouldn’t it be radioactive from the beginning? And if it was some kind of general trigger, why wouldn’t it happen all at the same time?” Cap shakes his head. “But what is the point of it? And who left it? I think we should try to figure that out. It could be important. Critically.”

“Eh, it’s probably just Loki’s idea of a joke, not to mention a way to slowly and painfully wipe out humanity, if it gets that far. He’s probably getting his jollies right now thinking of what he left behind. Which, by the way, do we have a way to message Thor? Or any other gods, pretty much any substitute with a fanbase will do? We have them on speed dial, right Fury? Or at least can we, you know, start building a ladder to the heavens or something?”

Steve opens his mouth to say something. Fury frowns and shakes his head.

Tony stands up, holding out a hand to forestall any talking. “But whatever. What good does it do to massage all the possibilities and strategize when, bottom line, if it’s a threat the only strategy is just, jump in and fight it.”

“Typical,” Steve mutters. His hair is curling up at the back of his neck and he’s got his horrible plaid sleeves rolled up, leaving his ridiculous forearms uncharacteristically bare. His face is flushed with anger, or at least frustration.

Tony just walks away. On his way out the door he can’t help it, he has to add, “And typical for you to waste your time on strategy and asking questions that in the end won’t matter, since in the final analysis it’ll come down to someone being a _real_ hero.”

~

It’s late that night -- very, very late, actually morning -- when the call comes. It startles Tony awake. He’s lying face down on a mockup of the optic nerve, his side project. He worked on it in the wee hours to relax himself, after working for hours on theories about the radiation trigger. Normally he’d engage in some negotiation with JARVIS for a few more minutes’ sleep given the ridiculousness of the hour, but it’s their highest level of alarm: Avengers and world in mortal peril, basically.

He’s halfway into the suit before JARVIS is done briefing him, and out of the Tower by the end of the sentence, heading toward Brooklyn. Figures it’s fucking Brooklyn. It’s going to be awesome fodder for the late night comics, assuming they aren’t radioactive about two minutes from now.

What JARVIS told him has a chill trying to chase up his spine; a sudden spike in radiation, gamma again, massively greater levels than they’ve had so far, untold numbers of people within a tiny radius, let alone ten miles, twenty, fifty... Winds moderate, westward, with gusts to the north. Rush hour starts up in minutes. Fuck. “Jarvis, distance to Midtown?” It’s not like he doesn’t know, but...

“Approximately nineteen miles. And before you ask, Sir, approximately ninety six miles from Philadelphia.”

JARVIS talks to him the whole way, relaying what they’ve learned in the past few seconds and what they are still just guessing. A government employee driving the Parkway with a radiation sensor attached to his jeep raised the alarm. Captain America answered a call for help from the authorities in the area. Radiation at a hundred times the levels as in any previous incident. “And before you ask, Sir, no, there has been no new information on how material leftover from the battle could spontaneously produce gamma rays. Not to mention at this heightened level.”

“Fucking magic,” Tony murmurs. “Mixed with science, worse yet.” He swallows. “Bruce, you on yet?”

“On now.” Bruce’s voice sounds calmer than Tony’s. Good.

“JARVIS, where is Cap and why don’t we have him--”

JARVIS breaks in. “He is on his comm, Sir, but not speaking, because he is running. He was in Brooklyn when the call came in and therefore close to the anomalous readings. His initial entry into the scene was on foot, no vehicle. He removed all others from the scene. There were no emergency vehicles present when he identified the object. He picked it up. He began running. He has been running for approximately eight minutes now, at previously unheard of speeds and therefore--”

Now that Tony thinks about it, they’ve been hearing it for a while -- a rushed, reedy intake and exhale of air, faster than should be possible and have a man still conscious through it. He’s pretty sure he can also hear wind in the background.

The crazy bastard, what the hell? That thing is flooding out literal poison to cells, organs. Despite the super soldiery thing, Cap’s still human, with a fragile shell.

The guy’s proving a point, Tony guesses, and it pisses him off, a sudden spike of anger, hot. “Asshole,” he mumbles under his breath. “Asshole!” he says, louder. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? This is a job for Iron Man and you know it. Set it down and stand clear, Cap.”

“No time,” Steve croaks in between breathing hard.

“Bullshit,” Tony says, putting on more speed. “God fucking _damn_ it, Cap, why didn’t you fucking call us in sooner. Belay that, don’t fucking answer. Don’t waste one single bit of your fucking breath for--JARVIS, are we at maximum speed? And where the _fuck_ are the emergency backup people, SHIELD--”

“As you know, Sir, we have been at maximum for the entire--”

“Widow here, Iron Man. SHIELD is massing a quick response team, will arrive slightly after you.”

“Finally. You run it, don’t let them.”

“Right.” Natasha doesn’t waste breath or comm time with more.

Tony consults his readouts. “Bruce!”

“Triangulating location. Investigating possible sources of shielding. And yes, I’ve called up medical, uh, units. Also... Oh, shit.”

A sick spike of nausea twists through Tony’s gut.

“Tony, it’s... It’s increasing. By the minute. Gamma. If I had more time I could plot out the time-sievert relationship, but it’s...the millirem are going to be...”

Fuck. The anger from before is gone, replaced with a sort of icy steel. “Cap, I’m gonna be coming in hot. We’ve got your location triangulated and we’re running calculations right now. I’m really gonna need you to put it down now. The teams will pull you out while I fly in and grab it and get it--”

“No,” Cap gasps, the only sound they’ve heard from him other than the sharp inhales. “No time!”

The sick feeling in Tony’s gut wrenches harder. “I’m in a metal suit. You’re in a skintight pieces of what the fuck ever, not even any gloves according to JARVIS, what the fuck were you _thinking_. When I get there I’m grabbing the debris and getting it as far up as--”

Bruce breaks in. “Tony.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Too bad. There isn’t time, and it won’t be enough. It’s increasing at a rate, well. We need something to shield it. We don’t want that shit in our atmosphere. I’m working on...”

“Already going... water,” Steve gasps.

“Fuck! Then I’m grabbing it from you and taking it the last of the way, because you’ve got to already be at--” He stops himself. They all know the same thing: Cap’s likely already at lethal levels, at least for a regular human.

“Yes, water.” Bruce’s voice is tight.

“Salt or fresh relevant?” Tony snaps.

“No. Just, the amount. Depth.”

JARVIS has helpfully displayed maps of the area in question inside the suit, and now has Steve’s location on it indicated with a blue dot. He’s at a decision point between the inlet closer to land or heading out to the furthest point. The dot moves unerringly out towards the ocean.

“Ocean it is then. Cap, you’re smarter than you look. I’m going to deny I said that, after...” He trails off, Cap’s labored breathing echoing in the sick swoop of Tony’s guts. “Tell you what, you set it down right now and I’ll admit it on national television. International. “

Something sort of like a laugh interrupts the hoarse panting from Steve’s mic for a moment. It’s interrupted by a wracking cough.

“Swear to you, I’m -- JARVIS, how many seconds out?”

“Sixty five seconds from likely point of intersection. However, Captain Rogers will arrive at the ocean twenty point six seconds before that time if current conditions continue.”

There’s a silence. “Cap, listen. Twenty seconds isn’t going to make a difference, it--”

“Might,” Steve gasps out, voice wrecked now, deep and raspy.

“Bruce?” Tony asks.

There’s no answer, just silence on Bruce’s end and the sound of hard breathing on Steve’s. Tony’s heart does a double-thump. Crap. “Okay, listen. Bruce, Natasha, you guys get everyone and everything you can think of there for the aftermath. Cap, save your strength, don’t talk. I’m gonna be coming in hot behind you. The key thing is I know where you are and you don’t fight me once I’m there. JARVIS is keeping me apprised of everything we need to make decisions. I’m... thirty seconds out now.”

Which means, Cap’s close to the water.

“Ocean,” Cap gasps, voice a husk.

Tony’s eyes swivel up to the screen and holy fuck, Cap made it to the water sooner than predicted. He must have put on a burst of speed, the toll of which Tony can only imagine.

“Sir, the Captain is in the water, but his heartbeat is erratic and his body systems are experiencing critical failure.”

“Faster,” Tony whispers, watching incredulous as the tiny blue dot continues eastward, even if only by a few feet.

“Descending. Starting to slow.”

“Don’t. Minimal slowing. JARVIS, you’re faster than me: take control of the arms. I want the debris in one arm and Cap in the other, got it?”

“Of course, Sir. Switch to visual mode?”

“Yes.” And then it’s there for Tony to see in person: Coney Island of all places, the entrance, then in a blur the rides, then sand, the water’s edge, a bit of swirling snow, fucking winter is here apparently on top of everything else, then...

Steve, half-submerged at the line of the deepest breakers. Tony can tell even from here that he’s wrecked, barely dragging himself one step further, then another. His uniform is shredded, his skin a color his skin should never be, his whole body drooping and looking like he’s dragging himself through quicksand. In his arms, above his head, something that was probably part of a girder, once. Way too small to be the source of so much destructive energy. His breathing on the microphone is labored, rasping, heaving, with stops and starts that make Tony wonder if--crap, yes, he can see it on his readout, Steve’s fucking _heart_ is stuttering to a stop, rebooting, then doing it all again. He’s swallowing water, too, got to be, going under for long stretches, then pushing back up to the surface to try to swim out deeper.

Tony hits the ocean hard. JARVIS helps: he grabs at Steve with one arm and essentially _throws_ him to shore, hopefully safe from drowning, since he’s likely to do just that otherwise. With JARVIS’ help he’s got the girder in the other hand, so the minute Steve’s safely somewhere on the sand, he grasps it in both hands, pushes out just a tiny bit further past the last breakers and then dives, down, down, down, hoping he got it in time, hoping Bruce is right that water will be enough of a shield, at least for now.

“Medical emergency right the fuck now,” he barks into his mic, even as he’s watching the readouts on the girder. Huh. He might be hallucinating it, but...

“Iron Man,” Bruce says, a subtle relief in his voice, “for whatever reason, the radiation has... I don’t understand it but, it’s stabilized at the same levels as about an hour ago. So, higher by far than any previous, but, not levels that will, say, wipe out the City tonight.”

“I love your always optimistic lens, Doctor Banner,” Tony manages. “So, I hang out down here with it? What?”

“Dive teams in the water, Iron Man.” Coulson’s voice, subtly intense. “They will be intercepting you in, oh, twenty seconds. Then you need decontamination, and then--”

“Do they have him?”

“Medical’s on its way. Estimated arrival one minute twenty five seconds.”

The lights of the dive teams approach. He races to the closest one and hands off the girder.

“Yeah, screw that,” Tony says. Even if they get there that fast, it will take them far, far too long to get Steve to anywhere with the kind of medical help he needs. At the last moment before he threw Steve on the shore, he got a good look. He’d stopped breathing. His skin was reddish. He was like a rag doll, limp. JARVIS had stopped displaying the readouts, but his heart had been racing, then dropping to almost no beat.

Tony pushes the suit to maximum towards the surface, then shore. Cap’s lying motionless on the sand. Tony vaguely notices the vehicles of the dive teams, and approaching sirens, a lot of them, but they’re still pretty far away, and the fastest thing they’ve got is a helicopter, at best. As far as Tony can tell, Cap’s not breathing. His skin, what’s showing, is red, with raised welts and dark areas he really doesn’t want to look at closely. He’s probably half drowned on top of everything else. His uniform is shredded. His fucking _feet_ are ripped to a bloody mess, though that’s a stupid thing to care about under the circumstances.

“JARVIS?”

“Organ failure, internal damage, cellular level destruction--”

“Okay, stop.” It’s definitely not good. Tony’s stomach swoops and he battles the instinct to pick him up with the fear that his own suit is contaminated and could hurt him more. If he’s hurtable at all any more. Ice stabs through him. “Fuck it.” He bends and scoops him up. His body feels so fragile.

SHIELD vehicles and helicopters swarm the site in the next seconds but he’d made the call, and he’s in the air and heading straight for headquarters. Nowhere else has such a sophisticated medical staff or equipment. He should know. “JARVIS, make sure they know I’m bringing it in hot, estimated arrival...”

“Two point two five minutes, Sir.”

“Yeah, that. Injuries unknown. Well, hell, massive gamma exposure, possible drowning. Maybe something alien, too, who knows. And...” He swallows. “I’m probably exposing him to more radiation, if anything got on my suit. Not if. I am exposing him to more, but--”

“Stow it, Iron Man.” Fury’s unmistakable voice, as calm as ever. “You had to pick him up. Nothing faster. It was the right call. Don’t waste time or energy talking.”

“Yes, Sir,” Tony says, and he can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’s ever said that in his life. Actually, he can’t, because when he was eight he pretty much vowed never to say that again to anyone. Well, except for fun. But right now, he means it.

Cap’s heart stops and doesn’t start again a minute out from the med center at HQ.

~

They revive him. Five times, Jesus Christ. Tony’s not sure anyone should really have to live through all of that.

“Idiot,” Tony murmurs, leaning his head into his still-gloved hands; he’d discarded the gauntlets hours ago, but never got around to much else. He’s self-aware enough to know he means himself at least as much as Steve. The entire flight out, the terrible moments in the water, the entire flight here, he’d had to work hard to suppress the useless memory of the last thing he’d said to Steve about heroes. Fuck. Now that he’s here, just sitting, he can’t stop thinking about it.

He feels hot liquid splashing on his leg and realizes he’s squeezed the paper cup of coffee in his hand so hard it’s spilling. Natasha’s hand steadies the cup. Bruce’s lands on Tony’s shoulder. Fuck.

They wait a long, long time.

~

Steve’s finally in a hospital room, with some sort of uber version of private Intensive Care. He’s white as a sheet under a layer of pink, peeling skin, unconscious, face frozen in expression. He must have looked something like this in the ice, Tony reflects, then shakes himself: morbid thoughts aren’t his usual m.o.

Tony had thought that Steve’s face was pretty expressionless a lot of the time before, but it turns out, not so much. The only movement is the faintest of stirrings of the blanket as his chest rises and falls minutely. Without it, Tony would swear Steve wasn’t breathing.

“He’s going to be okay,” a newly-arrived doctor finally says. “More tests just came back. It’s going to take a couple of days, even with his body, but he’s going to be fine. If it weren’t for his special metabolism, he’d be dead, many times over, but as it is... Full recovery, probably a week or two. He’s just asleep now. I’ve never seen anything like it; his body is reversing all the effects.”

Tony breathes out a lungful of air he didn’t even know he was holding. Bruce is crumpled on a chair across the room and he throws a wobbly smile Tony’s way. Natasha’s pacing just outside the door, and she smacks the door frame. “Yes!” Her grin, sudden and quick, lights up the room.

The doctor clears his throat. “Here are some effects we found on his person. We didn’t know if they might be urgent?” He holds them out. No one takes them and after a round of silent communication, Tony sighs and holds out his hand. The doctor hands him a worn wallet and a small, leather-bound book. He nods and focuses his attention back on the body in the bed. The doctor leaves. Tony should be elsewhere by now, but he’s suddenly exhausted.

Natasha and Bruce head out. They try to get Tony to leave too, but he just. Needs a few more minutes.

On an impulse, he glances into the wallet, which looks like Steve bought it at, god, a corner pharmacy or something. Nothing of note inside, just the usual stuff someone would have, though a bit more neat than some. Also, the guy appears to actually save his pennies -- there are a bunch of them in the coin pouch, with silver coins in the second one. Normally he’d scoff at someone spending the time to organize his change, let alone save pennies, the most worthless trash he can imagine, but there’s something so... so nostalgic about it, the idea that pennies are worth even carrying around...

It makes him think about the Depression, pictures he’s seen of orphans in their too-short sleeves and bare feet, begging in the streets of the New York on freezing cold days. He remembers Steve mentioning it to Charlie, being barefoot. He hadn’t really thought about it at the time, but he is now.

He shakes his head -- obviously something about today has him thinking in weird ways -- and is about to stand up and leave, when the movement jars the little book in his other hand, and something flutters to the floor. He grabs it and opens the book to stuff it back in, but his eye catches on what’s there on the page he’d opened the book to: a sketch in pencil of a boy -- young man, really -- head turned to the side like he’s looking off in the distance. The detail is astonishing, as is the care with which it’s drawn. The young man looks like he’ll take a breath and walk off into the distance any minute. Only. Only there’s something almost... wistful, in the rendering, like the artist is trying to capture him before he walks away.

He looks at the paper still in his hand, the one that fell to the floor. It’s on a different type of paper, larger, he sees. It’s yellowed, as if with age, and there are some spots on it, almost as if water leaked onto it. Something clearly ripped out of another book, or maybe a pad, and stuffed into this newer book. He opens it up. It’s a drawing of a beautiful young woman, dark curls sketched in around a vibrant face, full of life and a mischievous curl to her mouth, sparks in her eyes. Wow.

He turns a page in the book and there’s a picture of that same girl, at least he’s pretty sure it’s her. This time, though, there’s that feeling of wistfulness to the sketch again like there was with the boy, like she’s just out of reach.

He flips through a few more pages in the book: a few more of the same girl, a few of random other people, a lot more of the young man. They all share the same quality of being sketched through a thin veil, or from a distance, or the people in them have their backs turned, their faces averted.

There are a few more loose pages stuffed into this book, similarly yellowed to the picture of the girl, and he pulls them out. His hands shake a little; he thinks he knows what he’s going to find. He’s right, another sketch of the same girl, and three of the young man. All share the same immediacy, like they were created with the subject right there.

Holy shit: yellowed drawings, from nineteen forty-whatever. Those are the loose ones, apparently drawings Steve happened to have on him when the plane went down. The ones in the sketchbook, the ones that have that wistful feel, are from the present, from this year, after Steve was dug out of the ice.

Tony folds the loose drawings back up carefully. It feels like he’s been a voyeur into something he wasn’t invited to see.

That no one should have to see.

That no one should have to experience: the loss of one’s first love. The loss of one’s friend.

Tony glances quickly over at Steve. He’s still out of it completely, thank goodness. In the hospital bed, with his hair not perfect and the sheets tangled around his neck, he looks about... sixteen. He’s not, but Tony takes a moment and thinks about it. How old is he, anyway? Oh sure, the seventy years in the ice, but... as far as actual chronological years he’s lived, what would it be? No college, now that he thinks about it, so--so yeah, really young.

Tony was pretty much a loose cannon asshat when he was Steve’s age, and he didn’t belong to another century, not to mention, lose everyone and everything. Even time itself.

“Water?” Steve’s voice, husky.

Tony breathes out, quickly stuffing the drawings back into the book and closing it shut. “Sure.” He puts an inch or two in a small cup and brings it to Steve. “I shouldn’t give you anything after that stunt you played.”

“Stark?” Steve’s voice is barely a whisper. He looks at Tony likes he’s a ghost for a second. Tony can feel his muscles tensing. Does Steve think he’s Howard?

Ten different insults are on the tip of Tony’s tongue. Something about Steve’s pale face, the weird quiet of this room, slows him down. He sees the sketchbook out of the corner of his eye, the edges of yellowed sheets sticking out at odd angles. Something uncoils inside him. The guy deserves something familiar. “Sure. Stark, that’s me.”

Steve grunts.

Tony helps Steve drink, bringing the cup up to his lips. Steve’s skin is blessedly warmer than it was when Tony carried him here.

Steve lies his head back down like it weighs a ton after a couple of sips, closes his eyes. After a few seconds of silence, his mouth quirks. “Wrong one, though, sorry. Really don’t want to come to like this any more.” He waves a lax arm at the hospital room.

“I hear you.” Tony nods. “Well, since you’re still technically in critical condition, I’ll save the yelling for later.”

Steve huffs out something that might be an attempt at a laugh. It comes out more like a wheeze. “Likewise.”

“Okay, then. I’ll leave you to the tender mercies of, well, modern medicine. Though that does seem cruel even for me.”

Steve laughs weakly.

Tony heads for the door, but stops when Cap’s voice comes, low and serious. “Tony, actually wait. I...”

Tony turns around reluctantly. “We’re going to do this now?”

“Well, we could, uh, save the yelling. That’d be nice for my headache.” Steve grimaces.

Tony crosses his arms and leans against the door. “Fine?”

“It’s just,” Steve says, voice still rusty. “I...” He looks at Tony for a long moment, then shakes his head, as if he was going to say something else, but reconsidered. “Thank you. You should have let me take it all the way under, and kept away, but.” He smiles hesitantly. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

This would be the time for Tony to make a caustic remark, or at least deflect. Something about Steve’s drawings of those long-lost people, or how quiet the room is, or the too-still way Steve’s holding his body makes Tony take a breath, then another, before he responds. He finally figures out what he wants to say as he’s almost ready to leave. He turns the handle on the door, then pauses and looks back. “Don’t think I’m not reaming your ass for that stunt later, but... me, too.”

He doesn’t wait to try to figure out what the expression on Steve’s face means.

~ ~ ~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer wait between parts. The holidays and Yuletide, etc. intervened. This chapter is almost 8100 words and the next chapter should be much faster in coming -- it's already partly written. It was really, really fun to come back to these characters, and I can't wait for some of the things that are coming up in future chapters (rough guess is there will be around four to five more after this).

There’s something Tony’s been putting off, and he yells at himself to get over it and get over himself and the whole -- whatever, thing -- between them, and get on with it, fuck the hostility, fuck the weirdness. He’s put it off too long as it is, though granted some of that was him trying to be sensitive to the fact that even though Steve recovers astoundingly fast from his encounter with lethal-radiation-slash-almost-drowning, to the point it’s eerie, he’s still turning a greenish shade of white for a few weeks whenever he pushes too hard physically. So yeah, Tony was being... sensitive.

But now, here they are. Tony drags Steve up to the top of the Tower, mumbling about it being fucking time and malingerers can’t expect to get to do that forever.

Steve’s frown grows exponentially with each step out onto the roof.

“Don’t let your face stay like that, those wrinkles will set,” Tony says.

Steve digs his heels in, literally, stopping where he is and folding his arms across his chest.

“I’ve been remiss about this,” Tony says grimly.

“You’re shoving me off now?” The corner of Steve’s mouth curves fractionally into a smile, but it’s uncertain.

“I should for that stunt you pulled, but in lieu of yelling at you, or maybe it’s better to say _additionally_ , in addition to yelling at you, we’re going to start practicing, you and Iron Man, flying.”

“I don’t--”

“Yeah, yeah, well, I’m not super excited about it myself, but let’s face it, Cap and Iron Man being able to work together makes sense, as much as...”

 _as much as Steve and Tony doesn’t_ hangs in the air between them for a moment.

“Look, we’re both professionals, so.” Tony throws another set of gloves at Steve, a better one than he’d brought, made from a special Tony-designed fabric: it’s very cold, though clear.

“Yeah.” Steve almost-sighs. “It’s not just that it’s, uh, you.” He looks away. “I have kind of a. Flying, you know.” He waves vaguely.

Tony shakes his head. “What?” He doesn’t even attempt to keep the irritation from his voice. “Time, mine, valuable.”

“Forget it.” Steve’s voice is clipped, anger building.

Tony works hard to clamp down on his own frustration. “Look, we need a method, a way for you to ride on Iron Man. Actually, more than one method, for different scenarios. But I’m not explaining the obvious all over again.” He sighs. “The fucking least you could do...”

Steve breaks in. “It’s the flying.”

“You say that like I’m supposed to get something out of it.”

Steve stays silent.

“Narcissist here!” Tony reminds him.

It startes Steve into a laugh, which is good because it frees Tony to think.

Steve shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

It takes Tony longer than it should to get the reference. Yeah, he’s a narcissistic idiot okay? Flying. Steve had seemed fine on the helicarrier and even the planes they’ve been on, but... eh, the mind is a complex thing. “So you’re saying that hurtling through the air with nothing between you and the Earth isn’t necessarily your idea of a good time?”

Steve grimaces. “Not exactly.” He sighs. “You’re right, though. I’ve been negligent about this.” He looks pale.

Tony clutches his chest dramatically. “Stop the presses. Get the quote.” He waggles an eyebrow at Steve. “I’m recording, you know, you can’t deny it now: ‘Tony miraculously right about something.’”

Steve laughs for real this time, which is good because it helps them get through any possible awkwardness figuring out how Cap should hold onto Iron Man and/or Iron Man hold onto Cap. Not that Tony _does_ awkward, he doesn’t, but still.

Steve’s heart rate and respiration are off the charts the first few times they take off. Tony takes it slow and easy, keeps it low.

“Don’t baby me,” Steve says through gritted teeth to Tony after the first couple of times.

It kinda makes Tony feel weird, he’s gotta admit. “You’ve got reasons,” he finally says, then takes off a bit faster so Steve doesn’t think he’s coddling him or anything.

Eventually Steve’s heart and breathing calm down, though never to normal levels. His grip isn’t quite so tight, and they figure out the top two best positions for situations where Steve has to hold onto him, and vice versa; they both can think of too many scenarios where one or the other would be necessary.

Steve’s teeth are chattering despite all the cold-weather gear, but other than that he looks a little better than when they started, a healthy flush in his cheeks.

“I’m going to work on some rigs for this, too, maybe something you carry that helps you strap on, and also something in the suit,” Tony says when they call it quits after an hour or two of practice.

Steve nods. “We need to be able to do it without any of that, too. And maybe, for rescue situations, something to--”

“to allow us to carry other people, yeah.” Tony considers. “How high can you go, without breathing stuff, special suits?” Tony asks. “Do you know?”

“I’ve got an idea, but we should probably check that out, too.” Steve has a wrinkle in his forehead like he’s thinking. “Communication, too. Maybe, something for if the regular stuff doesn’t work, or I don’t have it on me.”

Tony nods, already planning various experiments, not to mention inventions. “Better do this whenever we can, then. Uh. Just, I don’t know, when most people won’t see us?”

Steve strips off his gloves. “Right. It could be a tactical advantage for people not to know the details of how we work in the air.”

Steve’s hands aren’t shaking like they were at the beginning, something Tony had noticed but was careful to not mention at the time. Hey, he’s a dick, but not _that_ much of a dick. “Nights?”

“It’s a date.” Steve’s voice is a bit wobbly, but there’s that dry humor thing that occasionally appears, so, good.

“I’ll bring flowers,” Tony says.

Steve rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything, so, for them, that’s almost getting along.

~

Pepper’s visiting for an extended SI board meeting, and they finally get a chance to be alone for dinner. Tony doesn’t think he’s quite ready to host her in the Tower -- too many memories -- so they go out to a quiet bistro where they can get a semi-private alcove in the back; Tony’s known Gino for years.

“You look good,” Tony says after the main course has been cleared away. “Really good.” And she does, he realizes. He’d thought so, based on their frequent videoconferences, but there’s nothing like seeing someone in person to really know. There’s some indefinable difference about the way she looks, something... relaxed? That’s not quite the right word, but there’s definitely something different about the set of her shoulders, the ease of her smile. “It’s working out,” he realizes.

She smiles, then looks down at the table.

“Hey, you don’t have to hide it from me if you’re happy, babe. I’m glad.” And, he realizes, he means it.

“You meant that,” Pepper says softly. “Always so kind.”

“Ha! Don’t make me choke on my cannoli.”

She raps him on the hand with her spoon. “Stop it. You can fool everyone else, but not me.”

He grabs the spoon, holds it still. “You of all people should know I really am that much of an asshole, most of the time.”

“But it’s the rest of the time that people don’t know about, isn’t it? And I think the rest of the time is actually most of the time.”

He rolls his eyes. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“Right.” Pepper rolls her eyes back at him. “So, I take it Steve still doesn’t get it?”

Tony frowns. “Steve? Get what?”

Pepper leans over the table. “Stop that right now. I know you don’t like people paying attention to the good things you do, but it’s pathological, the extremes you take it to.”

“Wait, I thought my tendency to throw myself into life or death situations was the pathological thing. Oh, I forgot, everything I do is fucked up.”

“Just like all I do is criticize,” Pepper says quietly.

Tony breathes out a huff of air and fiddles with the silverware on the table, then looks up at her. “Crap, Pep, sorry, I didn’t mean--”

“No. It’s me. My fault, seriously.” She bites her lip and wrinkles her forehead.

“Hey,” Tony says. “Hey.” After a second, he reaches across the table for her hand. “Hey.”

She looks up and searches his face, then smiles tentatively.

He smiles back because, yeah, they will always understand each other. “I guess we really...”

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “It’s just, we’d always be--”

“And that’s not how either of us want it. We want to be--”

“Friends,” Pepper finishes. “Real friends, who talk, and laugh and can be not quite so...”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah,” feeling something that’s been heavy in his chest lift, just a little, enough for him to realize it’s been there, sitting on him like a weight, for a really long time. Since they broke up. No, since even before that, when things started turning worse between them. Pepper’s perfect, really, just... not in a way that fits right with Tony somehow -- and clearly there isn’t anyone like that, because who _could_ really fit with a guy like Tony? You’d have to be certifiable or close to it, really. “Okay,” he says, settling back in chair, “so now seriously, tell me about Nate. Except not about sex, not ready. Though he’s hot, and so are you obviously, so maybe, actually yeah, that too, everything.”

She swats him across the table and they grin at each other and it feels good. Feels like what they haven’t had for a while, and even deeper than before they got together. Maybe he can have that kind of friendship with her, which would be--

“Tony,” Pepper says quietly. “Hon?”

“S’okay,” he says, managing a shaky smile. “Just, you’re important to me. You know that?”

“Yeah, I know. And you need to understand down to your bones that that is how I feel about you. I know you don’t, I know how little you think you’re valued but you have to get it, okay?”

He can’t talk for a little while, but, that’s okay. Because it’s Pepper and she’s seen him at his worst -- and at his best -- and never once betrayed his trust. She’s a little teary over the table so she’s feeling it too. “I just want you to be okay,” she whispers.

“I will be,” he says. “In fact, I am. I really am,” he says, and... he is. It still hurts, but it feels like it’s going to be okay.

~

He’s still riding the somewhat distracting wave of nostalgia and emotion from the conversation with Pepper when he and Steve practice flying the next night, so for a while he doesn’t notice that Steve keeps looking at him with more of a... weighing gaze than normal. It’s unseasonably warm, like it’s been the past few days, so they’re taking advantage of it to push higher in their flights, to see how that affects their operations, not to mention Steve’s, well, ability to stay alive. Tony’s rigged up a special microphone that Steve can wear all the time under his shirt. “Just a rough version for testing: I’m working on something much less bulky but stronger,” Tony tells him as Steve sticks it on the neck of his t-shirt. “Maybe even something you’d wear behind your ear, or on your neck, not sure. It’s in addition to the team microphones, and SHIELD’s stuff. I want to design some failsafes on both ends, too, something for you and something for me, in case the main systems cut out.”

“Why not just admit you’d rather I was a cyborg and implant something in my brain,” Steve says, without any particular inflection.

Tony looks at him sharply.

“It’s a joke,” Steve says, like Tony’s a bit dim. Tony’s almost liking the guy for a moment, only then Steve follows up with, “since you get along with robots best.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” Tony growls, taking off just a hair too fast. He knows he’s being a dick, but he’s feeling raw still after seeing Pepper and just... doesn’t want to think about the ways he’s fucked things up in his life.

Steve’s sigh is audible even over the ambient noise of their flight. “Tony, look,” he says, all traces of humor gone from his voice.

“Save it,” Tony says. “We’re going to fucking practice like professionals, and leave it all alone.”

Steve must hear the finality in Tony’s voice, because he doesn’t try to talk about anything, just executes their maneuvers with the minimum talking possible. But when they’re done, the second JARVIS has stripped off Tony’s gear, Steve’s at it again. “Tony, look. I’ve been trying to do this for a long time, and you always shut me down, but not tonight.”

Tony walks away.

Steve grabs his arm and starts talking, low and fast. “Tony, for God’s sake, let me apologize, damn it!”

Tony shakes his hand off. “Two swears in one sentence: what is the world coming to...”

“Stop it! You don’t have to say anything, just listen.. I know about your anonymous donations, millions and millions, all those things Stark Industries supports quietly like the kids’ clubs...”

Tony freezes. He turns, cold suspicion rising up in his throat. “Pepper,” he whispers. He’s feeling jittery in the way he associates with the rare times he’s gotten attention for stuff like this.

“Well, yeah, we had lunch today before she left town and she went on a lot about how you’re a really good person underneath it all, but--”

Tony’s heart is pounding and the fight-or-flight feeling’s intensifying. He is so fucking going to kill her. He shakes his head, starts to move away from Steve.

Steve grabs his arm again, but his voice is very quiet. “I wouldn’t--I wasn’t trying to--”

“Yeah, well, Pep is--I don’t know what she’s doing or why, but she’s wrong.That shit is easy. It’s nothing.”

Steve looks at him with a level stare. “Why are you so uncomfortable about it? Was it your father, something about--”

“Okay, we’re done. I’ve got fortunes to amass. Stay, or go, but no more psychobabble crap.” Tony pushes past Steve.

Steve grabs his arm and holds him there, at his side. Tony could try to break free, but that would be undignified considering, super soldier. He’s about to do that, though, or worse, when Steve says, low and quiet, “It’s okay. You don’t have to--I’m not going to make fun of you or worship you or whatever it is you’re worried about. It’s okay, and I’m not going to bring it up, okay? I didn’t--I told her to stop, had her stop telling me, because I figured, it’s stuff you want private.” He gently lets Tony’s arm go.

It takes Tony longer than it should to move away. He decides, on balance, that just nodding is good enough. So he does, once, sharp: _message heard and accepted._

Steve’s true to his word and never brings it up, never even alludes to the specific things Pepper undoubtedly told him about. He picks a fight with Tony within ten minutes the next day, while they’re doing more radiation-infested-garbage cleanup, a fight about -- television, coffee, people, whatever -- the point is, he picks a fight, which is great and they bicker and eventually Tony feels normal again, or close to it.

~

When Steve decides he has to do something, though, he doesn’t give up. Understatement of the century. He’s like a dog with a bone, he just won’t stop. Which is why Tony’s not that surprised when Steve corners him a few days later to talk. _God_ , Tony hates Talks. Steve stops an elevator when they’re on their way to yet another SHIELD briefing. Great. Trapped, unless Tony makes a scene.

“Tony, I know you hate this kind of thing,” Steve says without preamble, “but I’ve been trying for a while, a long time before I saw those things Pepper showed me, to say...”

Tony raises an eyebrow in a way he’s been told is definitely, yes absolutely, annoying and provocative.

Steve rolls his eyes. “You don’t make it easy for people, do you?”

“Is that what you want?” The words are out before Tony realizes he’s going to say them. They were meant to be sarcastic, but they don’t come out with the edge they’d need to really be that way.

Steve cracks a tiny smile, almost like it’s against his will, then wrinkles his forehead and stares hard at Tony. “Are you ...okay? You seem different.”

“If ‘different’ means, pissed off because my teammate has me trapped in an elevator for a sensitivity session, when said teammate never confronted the fact he cavalierly threw himself into a situation that could kill him and endanger the public -- unnecessarily and maybe even, dare I say it, pissily, involving fucking garbage leftover from a fight with lizard people that spews radiation and unknown poisons...”

Steve mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, “It’s always the brunettes,” then shakes his head. “You’re doing it again. Look, Tony, I know we got off on the wrong foot and you don’t really like me, and things got, uh, complicated. So maybe you don’t need this, but I do. I’ve been wanting to say to you, for a long time, the things I said at the beginning, when we first met...” He frowns. “I was stupid, okay? I went by what you seemed like on the surface, made a call, the wrong one. It was wrong. I was wrong, out of line. And I apologize. It’s not Pepper’s articles about secret donations and stuff; I’ve known this for a long time. Heck,” he says, looking down, “basically from the moment I said that stuff.” He shakes his head. “I knew I should say something, but I was... chicken.”

Tony swallows. Sometimes he forgets what a brave -- and up front -- guy Steve really is. A million responses come to mind but something about Steve’s tone makes Tony want to match it for seriousness, at least a little. The Tony version. “Yeah, well. You’d sort of just crash landed in another century. Plus, I probably have a bunch of issues I projected onto you, etcetera.”

Steve laughs, though it turns into more of a cough.

“So sue me, I’m crap at apologies. Giving them _and_ accepting them. I usually just don’t.”

“I know,” Steve says, softly.

The silence builds and Tony finds himself staring at Steve’s hands, motionless at his sides, the sweep of his shoulder under the ridiculous plaid shirt he has on, and he remembers--

Oh, no. So not going there. He clears his throat. “Okay, well, are we good? Can we--Are we through with the Doctor Phil stuff? Because I for one am dying to get to the SHIELD meeting. I mean, you haven’t lived until you sit through four of those in one week.”

The elevator dings and the doors open. Steve just smiles at Tony and waves for him to preceed him out the door. Tony can’t stop talking: “Okay, backing out of here before I say anything more idiotic. Than I already have.”

Steve’s laugh, rusty-sounding, follows him down the corridor.

~ ~ ~

So things change again after that.

But fortunately, not too much.

“Tony, darn it, stop grandstanding and get in your position.” Cap’s voice, irritated at Tony, thank fuck, because the ‘getting along better’ and ‘being empathetic’ thing is starting to get on his nerves. Even though it lasted a couple of days, max. It got on Steve’s nerves too, maybe, if the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders recently was any indication. Sure, it’d made the team work more smoothly in some ways, but it sure had been boring, and boredom wasn’t a good thing all the time, not when you had to be on top of your game and ready to deal with whatever random thing the crazy radiation-infected garbage was going to spew out at the populace at a moment’s notice. Like it had. Spit things at the populace, that is.

Because yes, that is Tony’s life now: the individual pieces of remaining garbage, in addition to cycling in and out of being massively radioactive, are now shooting at people. Well, not shooting exactly, more like, expelling thing at high velocity if people or objects get too close. And what’s really bizarre -- because that’s not enough -- the projectiles they shoot don’t actually hurt per se, and they dissolve or something upon impact, because afterwards, there’s no evidence they even existed, except for a strange new type of radiation that oscillates between gamma and--fuck, whatever. It’s really fucked up, and any brief interlude of relative peace they’d had with dealing with the radioactive threat is over. Tony’s low-grade headache, that had been almost gone for a while, returns. To make matters worse, there’s a cold snap that has all of New York in whiteout conditions, so they have to dress for those conditions and work in them blind. Tony’s relatively comfortable in the suit, but everyone else is suffering, and even for him the few seconds getting the suit on and off is enough to make him lose feeling in his fingers.

Tony shakes off his musing.“Oh, Headmaster Steve is back, excellent. I’ll throw a few spitwads.”

“Iron Man,” Steve’s voice says on the com, threatening.

“Sorry, was that reference too modern for you? They’re things school kids make out of paper and--”

“Watch out on your six!” Steve’s voice, all-business. Sure enough, some of the projectiles are being lobbed at them out of a quickly-abandoned turnpike rest stop in New Jersey, where they’d been ferreting out a bunch of tiny radioactive garbage fragments. They’re working on trying to figure out what the hell the projectiles _are_ , plus how to disarm them (ha!) or negate the threat or hell, anything, basically. Anything to help them protect people from the growing threat, because it was one thing when the debris-pieces were simply capable of cycling to deadly radioactivity, but now... now they seem to be _attacking_ , not to mention, the incidents are multiplying exponentially at this point. SHIELD is at the breaking point, the incidents are expanding inexorably westward, the National Guard’s been mobilized, and all with them not having the slightest fucking clue what the hell is going on. There’s a team trying to contact Thor but... Tony’s not exactly confident they’ll be able to, or that if they do it’ll make any difference. So for now, this is the research plan: try things and see what happens.

“Okay, let’s try a distraction,” Steve says, sounding calm and like he’s strolling in a park instead of freezing his ass off in mortal danger. “I need someone to get in close and be a distraction, to see if it can do two things at once.”

“Sure. On it. I have first-hand testimonials that I can be very... distracting,” Tony says, advancing on the weird cloud of radioactive stuff being thrown out of the pile of garbage. “Of course, I’m at my best at _distracting_ when the other guy -- or girl, girls are awesome too -- is fresh from battle and pissed off at me.“

There’s a muffled chortle over the comm that sounds like Barton, and a higher-pitched choked-off giggle that must be Natasha.There’s stony silence from Steve, or at least that’s how it feels to Tony.

“Come on, Cap,” Tony says as he flies around in dizzy circles, “I’m being the bait here, you could at least laugh. Or maybe you’re a bit... sensitive on the issue.”

The stony silence continues. Okay, this feels more normal.

It’s all business after that for a while. Tony gets shot at, the suit handles it fine, they figure out that yes, unfortunately the garbage does seem to be able to spew its projectile-things at multiple targets, and Tony forgets the whole thing until that night when they’re back at the Tower cleaning off garbage and defrosting themselves.

“So what was that?” Steve asks, looming suddenly in front of Tony as he exits the locker room. Steve’s hair is still wet from his shower, fighting to escape the perfect comb-job Steve’s given it. A couple of tendrils are starting to curl on the back of his neck.

Tony cocks his head. “Loki’s idea of a joke, I’m thinking.”

“You know what I mean.” Steve glowers at him as they wait for their respective elevators. “Just, cut it out. It’s not something to joke about, what we--” He draws a quick breath and shakes his head. “You know what, forget it.” He strides into the now-waiting elevator.

Tony’s suddenly -- he doesn’t even know -- angry or something. “If you can’t even say it, I don’t think you can be mad about it,” he sing-songs. He stands in the doorway of the elevator and blocks the door from closing.

“You know what, you’re right,” Steve says, rounding on him so Tony’s in between his bulk and the wall. The unoccupied elevator’s door shuts behind them. “I’ve been chicken about it because I know you’d rather it was out of sight, out of mind, but we should talk about it.” He stares resolutely at the wall about four inches to the right of Tony’s eyes.

Tony can’t help but notice how Cap towers over him. Out-bulks him. All that strength and coiled anger, just... there. Those arms, those shoulders, that mouth, just--

“Tony.” Steve’s voice, exasperated.

“Well, since you can’t even look at me to have this conversation!”

Steve sighs and backs off a little. “Yeah, well. I’ve always tried to tell people, I’m not actually brave.”

Tony breathes out. Something in the slant of Steve’s head reminds him again of how young he really is. In a way. What Steve’s been through, despite that. “No, you are.”

Steve looks up, obviously surprised.

“I mean, did guys ever talk about any of this kind of stuff back then? Stuff between guys? Did you even--You know what, never mind. I can’t help the fact my mouth goes faster than my brain, but I’ll keep it out of team stuff, I can do that.”

Steve nods slowly. “Okay.” He takes a breath. “Thank you.”

“There now, was that so hard?” Tony smirks at him. “Or shouldn’t I say ‘hard’ around you?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Just go away.”

“On it,” Tony says, getting on his own private elevator. He breathes out when the doors close. Well, that was... different.

~

It makes him wonder, though. He’d been assuming Steve and he had done what they’d done because of adrenalin and anger and, who knew, some type of new-century experimentation on Steve’s part, basically some temporary insanity brought on by culture shock, or the dizzying options of the twenty first century, whatever.

But for some reason Tony’s suddenly got questions. He pulls out his phone -- portable computer, really, hey, it’s Stark Tech -- and brings up the pictures he took of Steve’s drawings, the ones in the sketch book that he’d seen at the hospital. Yes, he took photos, so? You never know when something is going to be important, or at least satisfy curiosity. He uploads them into his most powerful desktop while he ramps up his search engines.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t done it before, but he pulls up everything the general internet has about Cap, plus stuff only SHIELD has -- stuff Tony’s not supposed to have access to, but of course hacked ages ago. He’s not quite sure what he’s looking for, but actually it only takes minutes to find it: photos of the people in the sketches.

The first is Peggy, who even Tony had known something about. It turns out he really didn’t, though, because Peggy, well, is a fucking pistol, is what. Holy shit, endless missions behind enemy lines, a woman leading all kinds of troops and special ops at a time they were supposed to sit home and darn socks or something. Identified as extremely intelligent, aggressive, a leader in all ways. She’s gorgeous, too, strong and just... wow. And oh, haha, there’s a footnote that she doesn’t respond well to jokes about the “weaker sex,” not to mention, requests for dates. So, a fucking fiery pistol of an awesome woman.

The last thing in her file is SHIELD’s horrible “current status” document. In her case -- oh wow -- it’s just marked “inactive" and "discharged,” meaning, holy shit... she’s still alive. Has to be in her nineties or something, late eighties for sure. Yep: it even helpfully lists her phone number and address, a retirement home. There’s an even more impersonal appended note that one Captain Rogers was the last person to access her records, and yet one more, a biweekly status update on whether Captain Rogers has made any contact with her. Answer: none. Jesus Christ, the fucking government. Spying on an old lady apparently, probably has her phone tapped, everything monitored. He supposes it makes sense in a way. If Steve saw her, the psychological impact could be... Christ. But something hard and angry lodges in his chest even though he kind of sees the logic: some things should be private.

There’s a whole grouping of files lumped together as Rogers’s commando unit. All except one are marked “Deceased,” with a horribly stark stamp that even to Tony feels like someone’s pounding it home with every outsized letter in the word. There’s a cover letter that references the fact it accompanied all these things in a package to Steve, hand delivered, so he knows Steve has seen it all. He can almost picture Steve going through the documents in his quarters, each impersonal note another a nail in the coffin of what had been his whole life.

The immensity of Steve’s loss kind of hits Tony all at once, and he wonders, thinking back: when did Steve get these records? When did he find out almost everyone he cared about was dead? When did he first wonder if it might be better if all of them were? Because Tony is sure that as different as Steve and he are, Steve weighed the pros and cons of seeing Peggy and the one living survivor from his unit, just as Tony would. Either way, it would suck. Really, really suck.

Tony looks at a calendar. His stomach kind of hurts because, Jesus, there can’t have been much time between when Steve woke up and when the Chitauri invaded. He was probably still just coming to terms with the loss of everyone and everything he’d known when Tony and he had--

Angry now -- at himself, some, at SHIELD, a lot -- Tony punches in a final request. He gets everything on the Unit Steve commanded during the war, and it only takes a second for him to see what he’s looking for. Blurry, black and white, face obscured a lot of the time by dirt or camo paint, but unmistakably the same guy as in the sketches, Steve’s second in command. Tony’s heard of him vaguely: Bucky Barnes, childhood friend, hero, lost comrade. But... He’s the guy in the sketches. The pictures Steve drew, back then, and here in the present. The pictures that, along with those of Peggy, had that ineffable quality of longing, and loss.

Bucky’s dashing and courageous and... gorgeous. One photo, a candid, captures the whole group of them, the commandos. All of them are looking at the camera, with one exception: Steve, who’s looking at Barnes with an expression in his eyes like...

Well, shit. _Shit_.

Tony makes himself read everything in the file: the childhood, the friendship with Steve, both of them from the wrong side of the tracks, hell, not even on that side in Steve’s case, more like from no side of the tracks: a fucking orphanage. Enlisting and then the Unit, all the special ops and then the horror of being taken and experimented on, Steve coming for him and then later--

There’s even a helpful picture in the file of the huge cliff Bucky fell from, the train and the cliff. It’s not winter when the photo’s taken, but even so there’s snow up on the peaks around the ledge where the tracks are. Tony’s imagination fills in the rest from the accounts in the file. His stomach roils.

If Steve accessed this file after he woke up in the 21st century -- and Tony’s sure he did -- he would see that the note still reads the same as it has for almost three quarters of a century -- “missing, presumed dead.” Obviously dead at this point.

Bucky’s file indicates he was a ladies’ man, so Tony’s not sure about him -- that could go either way. But looking again at Steve’s drawings, the pictures he has of them on his phone, Tony is sure about Steve. Regardless of how Bucky felt about Steve, it’s pretty clear how Steve felt about Bucky. Tony closes his eyes, imagining what that would feel like, holding someone by your frozen hand, the inevitable slip of fingers...

Waking up in this century must have been like losing him all over again for Steve. Tony shivers, then puts everything away, closing all the search windows carefully.

~ ~ ~

“Listen,” Tony says a few days later, during a mission that involves lots of waiting around -- some new whack job thinks it’s funny to drag people near radioactive debris sites for jollies and ransom, and they’re trying to catch him by, well, waiting around the area he was last seen in -- “I’m working on a new polymer for the team’s suits. Also a better fallback mic system between Cap and Iron Man. I was thinking it’d be good to get your input.”

“Sure.” Steve rubs his hands together against the cold. It’s fucking freezing. “When?”

“That’s the thing.” Tony tries to make his voice very casual. “It’s going to require lots of little fixes, then down time while I work and then more checking in about it, and sometimes I get interrupted. So I was thinking, you have paperwork and drawing and crap that you do. There’s a desk in the corner of the workshop, couple of computers etcetera, that you could maybe kind of hang out at. In between.”  


Steve whips his head around and stares, raises an eyebrow. Clearly Tony needs to work on the “casual” thing.

Tony forges ahead even though he’s starting to feel like an idiot. “Bruce is set up in there already, has a whole side of the place. He’s got a mini-lab on his own floor for fucking around of course, plus access to all of Stark’s facilities, but sometimes there are synergies and it just...” He trails off, waves a hand around. “Okay, right, whatever. Just think about it, for whenever.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Tony figures that’s a no.

Just then, the whack job runs out of the warehouse he’s been hiding in. Unfortunately, he and his gang have hostages. They have to let him get to his plane, which sucks, but they can’t always pull off miracles. The hostages all turn up ten hours later at different airports, healthy but shaken. Tony’s got a feeling it’s not the last they’ll see of him.

He’s wrong about Steve, it turns out. It’s a few weeks later when Steve walks into the workshop. He’s carrying a drawing portfolio and his shield. “I thought maybe you’d want to see the damage that last spray of radiation bullets -- or whatever they were -- did to the shield?” He coughs. “But of course you have lots going on, so I--” He gestures at the portfolio. “Maybe it’s not a good time though?” He looks like he’s ready to bolt back out the door any second.

Tony works to keep the weird feeling in his chest out of his voice. “Yeah, perfect. Go, go, got a place over there. Unless the light is bad? It doesn’t matter to me where you are, so long as you’re not in the line of fire on this side.” He motions to the robots and parts scattered all across one side of the space.

Steve nods.

“And if anyone yells ‘duck,’ do it. There’s coffee... somewhere. Sometimes Banner wanders in and says something.” He sticks his head back under the device he’s working on. “Oh, and, sometimes I work for days without talking to anyone. Or showering. But if you need me just throw something at me or something.”

Steve’s mouth quirks slighty. “Sounds good.” He takes a halting step or two toward the corner with the desk.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Spread out, come on! Trust me, I’ll tell you if you’re in the way.”

“Yeah, guess you would.”

Tony frowns. “Just don’t push any big red buttons and we should be okay.”

Steve makes a sound like an aborted laugh. “Got it. Those probably keep the internet spinning, right?”

Tony gives him a sharp glance. He’s figured out that Steve’s humor is... interesting. But yeah, that was definitely a joke. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “You gonna be around in a few? I’d like to finish this before I look at the shield.”

Steve sounds slightly amused, and a lot less tense than when he arrived. “Sure. Got a few hours. Brought some stuff. Maybe this place will get me sketching again... I haven’t really been--I haven’t done much of that since--”

Tony nods. “Go to it. There are computers if you get bored, also, robots. They don’t bite.” Tony purposely submerges himself in the work above his face, then actually loses himself in it.

When he pokes his head up a while later -- oh, two hours, according to the clock -- he sees Steve is at the area Tony created for him, all while making it seem like it wasn’t, well, created for Steve. Steve’s focusing hard on something on the computer screen. There are drawing materials out, but he’s not using them. Tony can’t tell whether he already has or not; his portfolio is open, so maybe.

Banner’s there too, which is kind of good actually, because the three of them spend a few hours analyzing the damage to the shield -- microscopic, but still, theoretically impossible -- and trying to figure out what it says about the threat that’s somehow being emitted out of the debris. 

Tony remembers the excuse -- er, reason -- for asking Steve in the first place, the new polymer, and has him try on different prototypes to determine their relative comfort and flexibility in actual action. “Blue is definitely your color,” he tries, testing the waters. Steve doesn’t take his head off, so that’s good.

They don’t really conclude anything about the shield, or the radioactivity, so, good, because Steve’s got a reason to come back. He does, not every day, but increasingly. Sometimes for a very short time between super soldier workouts or killing lessons with Natasha or whatever, sometimes for longer. Once or twice, Tony’s pretty sure Steve’s slept here, so he manages to have a few more quilts and pillows and things added to his own stash -- something Pepper had made him do initially -- and places a few in a handy area near Steve’s station.

~

“Oh, I didn’t--I can come back another time,” Steve says, stopping short just inside the door to Charlie’s room, when he sees Tony’s there. He’s got packages in his hands, and his face is rosy from the chill outside.

“Captain!” Charlie crows, a huge grin on his face. “You made sure all the ladies and gentlemen saw you coming to visit me, right?” he cracks, winking at Steve.

“Sure, you bet.” Steve glances at Tony quickly.

Charlie turns to Tony and says, sotto voice, “He comes to visit a couple of times a week. Boosts my cred around here, let me tell you!” He motions to the only remaining chair. “Have a seat, have a seat. Tony here was just doing a checkup on the system.”

“Checkup? The system?” Steve looks more and more bewildered, but also a little suspicious. He darts a glance at Tony.

“No frowny faces needed, Cap.” Tony squirms. “I just wasn’t prepared to go public yet.”

“Or ever,” Charlie says under his breath. “Swore me to secrecy.” He grins at both of them. “Ha! Could’ve saved gas money coming here together if you talked to one another once in a while. Anyway, back to the invention!”

“Invention?” Steve frowns. “Tony, what did you do now?”

“Hey! I’m hurt! Why does everyone always assume that I’ve done something bad?” He holds up a hand. “Rhetorical question, don’t answer, we’d be here all night. But in this case, I’ve haven’t done anything wrong.” He grins. “That I can think of. Granted, I’ve probably violated a few laws of physics and am going to definitely piss off a couple multinational companies.”

“What. Is. Going. On.” Steve narrows his eyes and looks more closely at the small plastic box Charlie is cradling in one hand. To his credit, Tony can see the lightbulb go off quickly once Steve sees the thin filaments leading from the box into a small device lodged behind Charlie’s ear. Steve wrinkles his forehead. “Tony?”

Charlie smiles at Steve and the smile turns bigger and bigger. “I can see like I was fifty with this thing!” he crows.

Tony shifts in his chair. He gets real busy with the tools scattered on the table and doesn’t watch as Steve takes in the whole scene. “There, I think that’s the best I can do here. If I can get you over to the lab again I think I can do even better. Bruce says it’s all copacetic on the medical front, by the way. Check again now. Does the new program make a difference?”

“Oh my god,” Charlie breathes, grabbing Tony’s hand in his and squeezing, as he looks at the letters on a sheet of paper in front of him. “Even better. It’s like I’m a kid again. Boy-romance books, here I come!”

““Eh, it needs to go wireless, and smaller, and integrate better with the distance vision issues,” Tony says.

“Now listen to me, young man,” Charlie says. “Nobody has ever had a solution. Everything went dim and blurry, then more so. This is the first time I’ve been able to read in years. It’s--” he stops, choked up.

Tony darts a quick glance at Steve. He’s looking between them, then at the device, frowning. He presses his lips together like he does when he’s pissed off, but this time, Tony can somehow tell that Steve’s pissed off at himself. Steve bites his lip then and looks around the room, purposely, like he’s looking for something. Things.

Uh oh.

Steve’s eyes fasten on the freshly-painted walls, the new furniture, the state of the art appliances. The new air conditioning duct, the energy efficient windows... Steve’s jaw works. Cap’s not stupid, and in a second he’s going to realize that it’s not just in Charlie’s room, that it’s new carpet in the halls and a beefed up security system and paint throughout, and the new caterer... On cue, Steve looks straight at Tony, eyes intense, lips pressed together.

Tony has to look away. Crap, he’s busted. And he really doesn’t want to talk about it. He just. He should be better at it by now, and with some stuff, he is: the public stuff, the Stark Foundation, the stuff that’s not... personal. This, though: it’s personal.

To his surprise, Steve doesn’t say anything. He’s very quiet on his chair while Tony tinkers and Charlie gossips. After a while, though, Tony feels Steve’s hand, huge and warm, clasp on his arm, then squeeze. “You did it with me, too: the floor in the Tower, the space in the workshop,” Steve says quietly, when Charlie goes to the bathroom for a few minutes. “You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to know, it’s--you make a difference.”

Tony has to take a deep breath against the feeling in his chest. He stays focused on the delicate equipment in his hands.

“So hey Charlie, you want to see the latest ones?” Steve asks loudly, rummaging around in one of the bags he brought, maybe like he’s doing it to give Tony time to deal with everything.

Charlie whistles after a second. “Boy, they sure are making these better than they used to! Look at the muscles on that cover model!”

“Nice, huh,” Steve says, matter of factly. “Not sure the writing in that one is quite Pullitzer material, but it does have a sailor in it.” Tony can tell even without looking that he’s smirking.

Charlie must hit him with something, because there’s a thwacking sound and then Steve’s mock yell: “Hey! You know you like sailors. Soldiers, airmen...”

They banter for a bit more before Tony takes a peek in Steve’s direction. Their eyes meet -- Steve is looking at Tony right then -- and Steve smiles at him. It’s not a smile Tony’s seen before: it’s hesitant, real.

Oddly, Tony finds himself smiling back. Just for a moment: then Steve’s forehead wrinkles and he looks away. Probably remembering what Tony’s really like. Or worried it’ll be misinterpreted.

Still, things are more relaxed after that. They all banter for a while about the romance novels Steve’s brought for Charlie. “Erotica, more like,” Tony says, setting off a debate that’s fairly surreal if you think about it: Captain America, holding forth on what makes something more of a romance novel than straight out porn. Of course, he doesn’t say the word, “porn,” but maybe with time... Tony tries to imagine Steve buying those books, and has a failure of the imagination, because, really? Still, the guy’s attached to Charlie and probably just really wants to make him happy.

They travel back to the Tower together. “That was. That was nice of you, bringing him those books,” Tony says, feeling like an idiot immediately for saying something so Kindergarten. “Did you order them on the internet or something? ‘Cause it’s pretty hard to imagine America here” -- he waves vaguely in Steve’s direction -- “thumbing through the boy on boy romance section. I’d think it’d be a bit of a blow to the old manhood.”

Steve shakes his head. “Bookstore. Never had a problem with my manhood.” There’s a quiet certainty about it that’s very... very Steve Rogers.

“Don’t bullshit me, you’re uncomfortable about it.”

Steve shakes his head. “No. Just not used to talking about it. No one talked about it, back in the day. Well, hardly anyone.” He looks up sharply: “Doesn’t mean people were uncomfortable with themselves. Some were, some weren’t.” There’s a pause. “There were a lot of things people didn’t talk about. Racism’s another. I mean, some people did, but mainly...” He shakes his head again. “It was horrible.”

“You did what you could, the integrated unit and all,” Tony offers.

Steve narrows his eyes. “What, you’ve been checking up on me?”

Okay, good: a bit of antagonism. Tony knows how to navigate with that. Maybe Steve’s ready for a bit of it, too, who knows. After all the almost heart-to-heart stuff going on here. “You wish,” Tony says.

Steve relaxes noticeably. “As if.”

Tony smiles, then quickly hides it. “Whatever.”

They ride in almost companionable silence back to the Tower. There’s a weird moment when the elevator stops for Steve’s floor, when Steve hesitates for a moment like he’s going to turn to Tony for some reason, but at the last second he doesn’t. Tony feels an odd pressure in his chest, a feeling like there’s something he should say or do, but he can’t figure out what. And probably wouldn’t do it even if he could.

~ End Chapter 6 ~


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so very long! Love all of you who have been so kind along the way so far. <3 I am so glad to get to this chapter; there's a scene in it I've had partially written for a long time and it's nice to finally get to it.
> 
> Warning: This chapter does contain a scene where a main character engages in violence. It's against a bad guy, but it's somewhat graphic. If you need more details, feel free to email me.

Things continue kind of steady for a while -- tracking down debris, time working on projects, occasional Stark Industries business. Without anyone saying anything, it slowly becomes more common for Steve to be in the workshop in his corner during Avenger down times. Bruce is there just as much or more, sometimes overlapping with Steve, sometimes not. At first Tony sort of made a point not to try to figure out what Steve was doing during the times they weren’t working on something together, but over time he’s figured out it’s usually sketching or studying contemporary culture and history, if it’s not working on theories about the radioactivity and strategies to combat it. 

There are times when Steve makes himself scarce and they don’t see him for a few days. Usually those times are preceded by Steve getting snappish with the team and silent when he’s in the workshop. He does more sketching, the pencil making louder and louder scratching sounds until inevitably, it breaks. “Hey, easy there, big guy,” Tony had said the first time it happened. 

Steve had glared at him with angry eyes. “Sorry I’m in your way.”

“That’s not--” Tony had started to say, but Steve pushed his way out the door and was gone before Tony could even complete his sentence. “Fuck that,” Tony said to Bruce, who was watching from behind his book. 

“Yeah,” Bruce said mildly. “Poor guy.”

Two days later Steve had been there curled in his corner asleep, when Tony got a brilliant invention idea and had stumbled bleary eyed into the workshop at three in the morning. 

“Oh, uh. Sorry, I’ll, uh,” Steve said, fumbling up to sitting. 

Tony had waved his hand dismissively in his direction. “Shh, shh, gotta get this idea down before it fades. Get me the set of spanners, maybe a sandwich, tell Dummy I need him...”

Steve had just stared at him, mouth open, then laughed, deep from the belly. “Well, yes _sir_.”

“Fuck you,” Tony said, snapping his fingers as he slid onto the floor under his latest invention.

Steve rolled his eyes and handed him the wrench he wanted and Tony got into his project and that was that. 

It happened again, every couple of weeks, Steve getting all pissy, but Tony was weird, he kind of appreciated it, Mister America being an asshole about someone moving his precious art folio or whatever, and just was pissy back, or sarcastic, or whatever he felt like. It wasn’t like Tony didn’t throw little tantrums about the intelligence of America’s government officials or why Dummy had ink stains on his chassis. Steve argued with him when he got like that, or rolled his eyes and made what Tony was pretty sure were sarcastic comments. 

~ ~ ~

He and Pepper are doing better at getting used to the new way things work for them. It’s not all smooth, but he knows she’s there for him, and he thinks she knows the same. Work stuff and personal stuff have always been mixed together for them, so he tries to ask about how she’s doing every few conversations. She does the same, mainly. He’s checked her new guy out, of course, and there’s nothing threatening in his file. Assuming you don’t count the pretentious scholarly article titles. He knows Pep wouldn’t like it, but there is no fucking way anyone’s getting near her who he hasn’t vetted. 

The radiation problem is driving everyone slowly crazy. Tony included. He _knows_ there’s something he’s not seeing, not understanding, but can’t figure it out. He’s trying, though, as is SHIELD; he’s got Jarvis running data through all kinds of filters and equations he’s devised. There has to be something that triggers the drastic changes in radiation. Their best working theory continues to be time, that there’s some type of time trigger involved, but it doesn’t explain the differences in the incidents. 

There are whole areas now that are blocked off to the public, and more and more people are having to be relocated. The Naitonal Guard has instituted quasi-martial powers, to keep people out of danger zones, and there’s a slow, low-level panic beginning to build in the populace. Tony spends a lot of time just staring at the maps of the U.S. he has on constant feed. 

Right now he’s focused on a plan to build a facility or even just a big room that can contain the radiation the debris kicks off. Their efforts at containment so far haven’t worked, and more than anything, he’d like a chance to run experiments on the stuff in a controlled environment. SHIELD for its part is working on weapons, no surprise there. Weapons against who or what, they aren’t saying. Can’t say, because no one has any idea who is responsible, though everyone’s money is on Loki being involved. Coulson assures Tony personally that they’re trying everything they can to reach Thor or any, uh, being who can connect up with Loki, but so far, no luck on that front.

~

Rhodes blows into town suddenly and drags Tony out on a much-needed night on the town. They do one of their favorite things, disguising Tony with a hat and scarf so they can go to regular places and play darts and get sloppy drunk with no one the wiser. To Tony’s surprise, Cap and Clint and Natasha come along when Rhodey asks, and to his even greater surprise, they all get along great. Steve can’t get drunk, but apparently he can get a bit happy, because there are marathon games involving coins under cups and some sort of special Army version of darts that have him and Rhodey laughing so loud the people in the bar give them all dirty looks. It’s all kind of surreal and he’s not sure exactly how he feels about it. 

After they’ve decimated their area of the bar, but well before the time the two of them would usually call it a night, Rhodey stands up. “Hey, beyond awesome, but. Gotta get going early tomorrow, so.” He pushes himself to his feet and straightens his spine and suddenly looks every inch a soldier. It’s unfair how he can still do that, given how much he’s had to drink. “Tony?”

Tony’s got to hand it to him: he has an unmistakable aura of authority even though it’s one in the morning and he’s got beer on his shirt. Tony smirks. “What, you need your alone time with me or something, baby?” 

“You should be so lucky,” Rhodey laughs, but shoos Tony along as he does so. “Anyone else ready to go back?” 

Natasha communicates silently with Clint with her eyebrows, Cllint wraps an arm around Steve’s back and shakes his head. “Nah, we’re good for a bit. We’ll see to Cap.” 

He and Rhodey continue the party in their own way back at the Tower, drinks out on the view deck, lights of the city sparkling below. Rhodey gets solemn like he sometimes does. “You okay, Tony? I mean, really? About Pepper and--Pepper.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “It was--hard. You know?”

Rhodey nods. “She’s a hell of a woman.”

“Right?” Tony looks down at his drink. “She deserves better than me anyway.”

“Fuck that,” Rhodey says, and yeah, that’s Rhodey.

Tony smiles: if there’s one person who unequivocally, one hundred percent has Tony’s back... “What about you? Any new babes christen the Rhodesmobile?”

“Ha! Not hardly. Well, there is one...”

“Oooo, Rhodey’s got it bad,” Tony teases, and deflects the conversation to Rhodey’s love life. He thinks he’s escaped, but Rhodey hasn’t been his friend all these years for nothing. Right as they’re saying goodnight, he says, “Oh and Tony? You should hit that. All muscle, all American and all enamored of one Tony Stark.”

Tony chokes on his drink. “Fuck you, he hates me!”

“Yes Tony,” Rhodey deadpans, “in the world where hate means ‘craves the buttsex.’”

Rhodey lets himself be shoved down the hallway, laughing, to the bedroom he always uses when he visits.

Tony decides he’s probably just jerking Tony’s chain. That’s the only thing that makes sense. “Jesus, gotta get some new friends,” he says to Rhodey’s back.

Rhodey just laughs over his shoulder. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.”

~

When things go off the rails, they go quickly. Tony’s spending another Saturday in his workshop. Bruce is supposed to be coming in a while so they can run some tests. Steve walked out again yesterday, hands clenched into fists, and hasn’t come back. Granted, Tony had been picking at him over -- whatever, America, the olden days. He’s undoubtedly boxing at his quaint old guys’ gym or running laps around Manhattan or drawing unflattering pictures of Iron Man at some cafe while waitresses -- and maybe some brave waiters -- flirt with him. Or whatever. “Dude really needs to chill,” Tony had complained to Bruce, after Steve had stormed out. “And yes, I understand the irony of me saying that.”

Bruce had tipped his head and looked at Tony in that quiet way he had, where it felt like he was seeing right through him. “He looks to you, you know.”

Tony sputtered. “What am _I_ supposed to do, he hates me! Also I’m the _last_ guy to help someone deal with, you know, whatever.”

Bruce smiled. “He likes last guys, though.”

Tony had rolled his eyes and thrown himself into the analysis of the radiation surges.

So anyway, now it’s nice and peaceful in the shop today. Good.

Jarvis’s voice suddenly surrounds him. “Sir, I’m monitoring police and government frequencies per your standing request, and there is a mention of the Captain. He is apparently involved in an altercation with--”

“Suit me,” Tony orders curtly. “And brief me. And see if you can get him on comm.” He’s in the air within seconds.

“Negative on reaching him. I proactively attempted it, but I will continue trying. There has been an uptick in radiation activity in the past few hours in the affected area. The National Guard and police have cordoned off a large zone after evacuating civilians. The perpetrator in question crossed the barriers and has transported a busload of children deeper into the affected area. He has issued a demand for a large sum of money, plus various weapons and military equipment, in exchange for withdrawing them from the radiation exposure.”

“Rogers?” Tony asks.

“The Captain was apparently riding his motorcycle nearby and responded to police broadcasts.”

“Yeah, yeah, what else is new,” Tony mutters. “Of course he did. Jesus Christ, nothing like a nice motorcycle ride through a blizzard in upstate New York.”

“I wouldn’t know, Sir.”

“Yeah, yeah, snark’s not a good look on you, Jarvis. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. And I’m flying fucking blind here,” he adds, as snow swirls around him. “You got it, right?”

“Of course, Sir. We will be arriving on scene in approximately thirty seconds. Might I suggest we observe briefly before landing? My sensors are showing many persons, some of them definitely children, on the top of some sort of tall structure. Ah, a fire lookout tower.” 

“Same whack job as before?

“Odds are very high, but there is no specific confirmation as yet. Law enforcement has the site surrounded, but he and his men are firing on them, and are now threatening the children.”

“Threatening to shoot them?”

“One moment... No, sir, at present they have taken some of the children to the top of the lookout structure and are threatening to--”

“Got it,” Tony says tightly. “Let’s get there, now.”

“Based on my analysis, we will be arriving on scene in twenty seconds. I have assumed you wish to go directly to where the Captain is.”

“Yeah, you got that right. No way he’s not where those kids are.” And there it is, he’s got it on visual now as they come in. There’s a gap in the snow, or maybe it’s stopped for a while, because he’s got a clear view of the forested hill down below, the metal and wood structure on top of it, the kind of place a lookout sits in summer to watch for fires. 

There’s a flash of blue and there’s Steve. At first it looks like he’s on the platform at the top of the structure, but Tony’s vision resolves and he breathes in hard. Steve’s not _on_ the platform, he’s dangling from it, body buffeted by the wind. Tony’s suit tells him that winds are around thirty miles per hour, with gusts to over fifty. Not that bad if you’re in an airplane: horrific if you’re dangling over a drop that would kill anyone, no matter how augmented. And holy crap, now Tony can see enough to realize the only thing holding Steve up on the tower is his legs, wrapped around some sort of pipe that’s sticking out a couple of feet from the platform at the top, so the rest of his body is dangling down from that. 

He’s moving -- Tony can see that even from here -- and whatever he’s holding onto below him is moving, too, a sort of sickening acrobatic swing out over the emptiness. With his other hand, Steve’s -- holy shit -- he’s got a metal pipe in his hand that he got from somewhere, and is wielding it upside down against a thug, probably the main perp, who seems to be aiming something that looks terrifyingly like a gun, not at Steve at the moment, but at the swinging bundle below him. 

There are other bodies up there on the platform, some of them sickeningly tiny, others of them undoubtedly bad guys, and the big ones are throwing things down on Steve, and reaching for--

“Jarivs!”

“I see, Sir. Plotting trajectories.”

“Right the fuck now,” Tony says, because suddenly, that weird blob underneath Cap resolves into view. The thing dangling below Cap, kept from dashing on the ground fifty feet below, is a kid -- Tony notices a tiny purple coat, and even as he watches, a matching purple knit hat loses its battle with gravity and falls to the icy ground below, taking a heart-stoppingly long time to get there.

In another second he’s close enough to see more detail: Cap’s got the hand of a little girl, who’s hanging from it, buffeted by the bruising winds. He can tell even from this distance that Cap’s struggling, that he’s putting everything he’s got into holding on, even as he tries to fend off the goons up above, but it’s not going to work; the kid is slipping, slipping. He sees Steve strain even more, grip precarious. He sees the instant when the wind is too strong, when even Steve’s amazing strength reaches its limit.

Tony catches a glimpse at Steve’s face in the millisecond before all hell breaks loose. His face has an expression on it that Tony’s never seen before, as he looks helplessly down at the child. Horror, despair, anger, self-hatred. Like he’s seeing a ghost, but one he created. Tony's never seen anything like it.

He flashes on the photos he'd unearthed of the place where Barnes fell from that train--the absolute desolation, the chasm below.

Cap’s fingers are visibily losing their battle with gravity and the wind; the girl’s going to fall. 

In the moment right before Tony snatches her, he sees Steve’s muscles bunch as if he’s thinking about letting go, pushing off with his legs into space to grab her on the way down or cushion her landing or something else insane. _No no no_ , Tony thinks, or actually screams into the mic, not sure if Steve's getting transmissions and had just been ignoring them, or not hearing them at all. “I’ve got her, hold on!”

He swoops under the girl and grabs her right in the microsecond Steve’s hand loses its battle and she’s slipping, or maybe right before it, grabs her and flies her quickly to the nearest group of officers clustered in the open. 

“Jarvis, protect Cap,” he says, undoubtedly unnecessarily: he can already hear Iron Man’s weapons firing back on the bad guys who looked ready to shove a few more kids off the tower. Thank fuck he knows with certainty Jarvis will sort out who can be fired on and who cannot, in that crazy mess.

He practically throws the small body at the waiting Shield agents, and in seconds he’s back to collect Cap, who had looked like he was losing his battle with gravity himself. “Get ready. Coming for you,” he warns, thankful for the practicing they’ve done and the modifications to the suit, because Steve’s dangling literally by one foot when he gets back, face contorted, body obviously wracked with pain or something else. Tony figures Steve’s not really capable of hanging on to the Iron Man suit, so he deploys the system he designed to strap him on, one that releases at a word from either of them as a safety precaution, if they’re within the right distance. 

There’s a rocky minute when the wind is buffeting them and Steve’s kind of not hanging onto the fire tower any more, but not really latched onto the suit either, and then he’s got him; Jarvis lets him know it’s safe to move.

His sensors tell him Steve’s heart rate is outrageously high and not decreasing, he’s breathing hard and fast and shaking; Tony can’t tell from inside the suit what’s going on. He lands them rough on the ground, trying to insulate Steve from the impact as much as possible. Tony strips off his gloves and gauntlets one at a time and tips back his mask, all while still holding Steve, who’s starting to struggle in his grasp. “Easy, big guy,” Tony says. “Let’s just make sure you’re okay before you--”

Steve wrenches himself out of Tony’s hands and heads off, wobbly at first, then getting his feet under him and jogging. Tony catches a glimpse of his face and he’s got an expression he doesn’t think he’s ever seen on his face before: cold, murderous rage. What the hell.

Then he sees him, the whack job mastermind of this whole “threaten kids with radiation for money” thing, being escorted by SHIELD agents to a waiting helicopter. He and his goons are cuffed and and it’s all being handled, so what is Steve--

Holy fuck, Steve’s... He’s launching himself at the kidnapper. He takes him down with one pounce. Steve’s fist pulls up and he hits him, then hits him again, and again. The goon is screaming now, and even in the time it takes Tony to get there, the sound turns kind of bubbly; internal damage. Steve’s not pulling his punches so the guy’s going to die right then and there unless this stops.

Tony’s not exactly a bleeding heart and has no sympathy -- none -- for the thug. The guy hung children off a fucking fire tower, not to mention tried to exploit the burgeoning radiation threat, but.

The SHIELD agents are standing pole-axed, staring at the scene, too shocked to move, or not knowing how to move. One of them has his taser up and is yelling something at Cap, but unless they use actual weapons on him nothing that puny’s going to stop him. Cap’s got murder in his gaze, eyes unfocused, intent on the bad guy underneath him. The guy’s making little bitten-off whimpering moans now, and there’s blood everywhere.

It’s... “Cap,” Tony says. Then, “Cap!” louder.

Steve glances at him, which is more than he’s done in response to all the other people yelling, but he hasn’t stopped hitting. “Cap, stop,” Tony says, grabbing his shoulder.

Steve shakes him off so Tony grabs him again. Steve swings at Tony -- _swings at Tony_ \-- right at his unprotected face, but he pulls the punch at the last second. Even so, it jolts Tony’s head back and makes stars explode in his head. Fuck that; Tony grabs onto Steve’s other shoulder and leans in. Steve pulls back and punches again, but it’s weak, hardly anything, just a half-assed jab at Tony’s arm. Tony leans in to Steve’s ear. “Stop. You’ll. You’ll regret it if you don’t. I promise, if you decide to, I’ll get you another shot at him, but right now you’re not--” 

Steve takes a huge shuddering breath. “He, he...”

“I know, buddy. I know.” Tony keeps his voice low and soothing, like he would if he were talking to Bruce when he was angry. “Just. Come away, come on, it’s over. He won’t hurt anyone else. It’s over.” He pulls at Steve’s shoulders, grapples him up off the ground. Steve’s hanging onto him now, stumbling.

Tony motions everyone else away from them. “Go. I got this. Get that piece of garbage cleaned up and locked away.” Everyone disperses to process the perps, check the kids, deal with the aftermath. Fortunately, the blizzard has abated and there are even patches of blue sky, which is going to make everyone’s job a bit easier.

Steve’s still clinging to Tony and Tony lowers them down onto the ground, behind some pines that shield Steve from everyone’s sight. He doesn’t take his hands off Steve’s shoulders.

“I, I, oh God,” Steve whispers. “It was. I had her by the hand, by the hand and she was slipping, falling... “

“I know, I know,” Tony says. “She didn’t fall, though. No one fell this time. She’s safe, all the kids are safe, you saved her, okay? _No one fell_.”

Steve buries his face in Tony’s shoulder. “He fell, he fell. I couldn’t hold on. It should have been me, it should have been me. I couldn’t, he fell...”

Fuck it. Tony pulls Steve in all the way against him, arms around him as best he can, awkward in the suit, presses his face to the top of Steve’s head. “Bucky, right? But that didn’t happen this time, okay? It didn’t. And you did everything you could, back then.”

“It should have been me,” Steve chokes out. “I failed him and--”

Tony’s chest is tight and his throat hurts. He pulls Steve in even closer, hands running soothingly over Steve’s back, hair. “You didn’t fail anyone. You never have.”

Steve makes a little sound, agonizing.

“No one fell this time. Because of you they’re all alive, okay? It’s okay, buddy. It’s all over, shhh,” he says, over and over, nonsensical but it seems to be working; Steve’s calming under his hands. His body is relaxing, and his shuddering has subsided to a slight shake.

Jarvis’s voice startles him. “I am sorry to break in, Sir, but I thought you would want to know that the radiation danger has subsided. There is no rush to depart. Shield is staying to attempt to analyze the dramatic change.” 

Tony nods, not needing to say anything for Jarvis to know he heard. He figures someone in Shield, whether it’s Coulson or Hill or someone else, wanted to give Cap time, too.

They stay there a long time, until Steve’s been breathing almost-normally for a while. Tony’s arms are still around him, hands steady on his back.

Tony feels it when Steve comes back to the world; he feels his body tense all at once. “Oh, god,” Steve says. “Oh, god. Is he--”

“He’ll live,” Tony says. “He’s hurting plenty right now, but he’ll live.”

“Oh, thank god. I don’t know what--I just, everything went dark and red and I. I wanted to kill him. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t wanted to hurt bad guys before, but this time I--I lost it. Tony, do you think I’m okay? I can’t go around doing that. Do you think--?”

“I think it was a one-time thing,” Tony interrupts, trying to stop the rising note in Steve’s voice. “ I _know_ it was. It was the hanging onto her hand over a huge drop like that. That--that’s loaded for you, right? And now that you know...”

“I can make sure not to let that happen again?”

“Yeah. Yes.” Tony puts certainty into his tone, and he _is_ sure.

Tony pulls his hands off Steve’s back, figuring he’s going to want to pull away. Steve sits up and looks at him. Steve’s eyes are red even though his face is dry; he doesn’t try to hide it. “They tried to talk to me about all of that, the psych people. I should have tried harder, but--”

“Screw that.” Tony shakes his head. He swallows. “After Afghanistan... “

He’s got Steve’s attention now at least for the moment; he watches Tony quietly.

“After Afghanistan, I was seriously crazy. Like, I should have been locked up. There was no way I could begin to even think about what had happened, let alone _talk_ about it.” 

Steve nods slowly. “Thank you,” he finally whispers. “And listen Tony: Thank you for today. If I had killed him--”

“I know.” Tony dusts some grass off the knee of his pants. “Personally I would have been happy to see you beat the guy to death. But I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want that.”

“I couldn’t have lived with myself.” Steve swallows. “Risky for you, too, coming in close like that.” Steve’s looking at Tony intently now, reaches out to cup the side of Tony’s face assessingly. “You okay? I hit you pretty hard even though I think I pulled it.”

“Eh. You know me. Adrenalin rushes are my game. It’s nothing, really. I’ve had worse sparring with Dummy.”

“Tony,” Steve says, and even Tony can’t ignore the gratitude in his tone.

Tony nods: _acknowledged_. Tony almost stops there, but--Yeah, fuck it. “You know, I did, uh. Meet with someone, this take no shit lady Rhodey knew from some Army buddies. Later, a while after. On my own time. For a little while.”

“Did it--?” Steve starts, then shakes his head.

“No cures in sight, not for the kind of things that ail us,” Tony says. “But--” and he surprises himself even as he says it, “but yeah, at the right time, it’s good. Mainly just for someone to talk to about it who isn’t going to run shrieking. They have to listen, when you’re paying them.” 

Steve makes a sound that’s probably an attempt at a laugh. “Tell me about it. Most people are kind of freaked out just by my existence. They sure don’t want to hear about people I knew back then or what stuff was actually like.”

“So it wasn’t all punching Hitler and chorus girls?”

Steve, incredibly, smiles at Tony, though it’s shaky. “Nah. Maybe if you want I’ll tell you about some of it.” He swallows. “Them.” He holds Tony’s eyes. “If you tell me about stuff. If you want to.”

“Promises, promises,” Tony says, looking at Steve's pallor and still-unsteady hands. “So have we talked about feelings enough now?” he asks brightly, moving to a stand and offering a hand down to Steve. “Because personally I’m needing some manly, macho posturing right about now. Not to mention some warmth of the liquid variety. You?”

Steve pulls up to a stand. “Beer, sports, dames and something involving gambling?”

“Sounds about right.”

It ends up being Star Wars with the team, pizza and soda and beer, but that’s just fine. Things are a little weird, a little raw between them. Steve sits a careful six inches from Tony, though as the movie goes on he seems to drift closer, or maybe Tony does; he feels the ghost-warmth of Steve's sturdy shoulder at his side. Whatever. It was good, what Tony did. He’s glad. He doesn’t get a chance very often -- ever -- to stop someone from doing something they will regret. He’s usually the cause of people doing things they regret, not the solution. It’s unsettling, but maybe--maybe in a good way?

When Tony passes Steve the pizza box later on, Steve says, “Thanks,” then a second time, under his breath so he’s barely mouthing the words, catching Tony's eyes and holding them, “Thank you.” 

Tony shakes his head and he starts feeling a little squirmy.

Steve’s gaze darkens and he lifts his hand towards Tony’s face, the side that Tony knows is bruising up. “Tony,” he says, brow creasing.

“Stop it,” Tony says. “Nothing I don’t get all the time doing way less awesome shit.”

“I hurt you.” He looks like he’s about to go off into a moody spiral, so Tony punches him in the arm. 

“Stop it. Believe me, you’d know if I was upset about it.”

“That’s for sure!” Clint says from where he's reclining against Natasha's knees. “Since Tony whines over every hangnail.” 

Natasha laughs and the corner of Steve’s mouth curls up a little. 

“He probably liked it,” Bruce cracks, smiling kindly at Steve, then Tony, and Tony feels gratitude for these people, who tolerate him and mess with him and actually seem to like him. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t you wish you knew,” Tony says, and then everyone’s laughing, even Steve, though Tony can see it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

~

It’s funny about people. Now that Tony knows the depth of feeling inside Steve, it seems kind of obvious, like, of course he has that inside. He just does a really good job of dealing with it or hiding it most of the time.

Weirdly and against all odds, Tony sleeps better that night than he has in a long time.

 

~ End Chapter Seven ~

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be really honest here. I've been working off and on on this story for a long time, with the encouragement of some awesome folks, who I'll name when I get a chance-- you know who you are. <3 I've been hoping that eventually I'd have this whole huge thing to post all at once, all edited and betad and rewritten. That I would re-do and tweak and get right. 
> 
>  
> 
> But. My real life got socked with a huge change, one that leaves me literally without time to do anything creative most of the time. So if I wait and follow my own rules for writing stories, I might be waiting until the cows come home. In the meantime, what I do have written, and these particular characters, sit in my googledoc. By the time i get this entire fic written if I do it "right," I might not even be able to write at all, haha. And I'm feeling so Not Myself because of my non-active participation in the fandom I love right now, and I'm sick of it. So I'm going to try something new, and try to post chapters of this things as a WIP. Maybe it will help get this story out! (Or maybe it won't, but it's certainly not happening as is).
> 
> ANYWAY, the point of this rambly note, which I hope most of you skip, blergh, is basically: Read this at your own risk. There will be no guarantee that there won't be editing problems, continuity problems, etc. )I'll go back at the end, and probably even as I go, and get it spiffier). And as a WIP, well -- I sure do intend to finish it and I want to desperately -- that's the whole reason I'm doing this -- but I certainly am not going to guarantee it. (I will, however, work hard towards that, and of course I'm going to try to post as often as possible).
> 
> ALSO: I am a movie canon person only, though I'm interested in the comics... so my characters, such as they are, come basically straight from the movies, of course filtered through what this story wanted to be about. There might be hints of some other things I've picked up just from being in the fandom peripherally, but, yeah. I'm making everything up, clearly. Sorry in advance if things don't comport with people's ideas of these characters, etc. 
> 
> Finally, there are things that are intentionally not clear, or frustrating, or assholish, in the first few chapters. Hopefully people will trust that at least some of those things are on purpose and will be addressed later.


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